


The Pressure of One Smile

by roseknight



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Future Fic, Homophobia, M/M, Moving On, Unrequited Love, enemies to friends to ???
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-25
Updated: 2018-10-26
Packaged: 2018-11-18 23:22:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 24,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11300949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roseknight/pseuds/roseknight
Summary: "Olympic hopeful Oikawa Tooru breaks the hearts of his female fans for good!""I did what?" he murmured to himself in confusion, picking up the gossip magazine.  He flipped through the pages and froze."The truth comes out... and so do star athletes Oikawa Tooru and Ushijima Wakatoshi!"





	1. Prologue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Full pairing disclosure: this is an UshiOi-centric fic with one-sided IwaOi. I love both pairings very much, so please don't mistake this as an excuse to bash either one.

_"Fuck this. How long are you planning on punishing me for not being in love with you?"_

 

 

_"That depends, Iwa-chan. How long are you planning on not being in love with me?"_

 

-

In Tooru's humble and worldly opinion, nightmares were supposed to be about monsters clawing their way out of the darkness, or aliens destroying human life with tragically beautiful explosions, or premature baldness. Terrifying things that weren't actually going to happen to him in reality.

Nightmares weren't supposed to be echoes of memories he didn't want to live through in the first place.

He took his frustration out on a cart of helpless volleyballs. To make it even more therapeutic, he imagined them as the faces of all the players he couldn't stand. He served Kageyama Tobio across the net, put too much spin on Semi Eita who crashed outside the court, and was prepared to jump serve Ushijima Wakatoshi with enough force to cause a minor earthquake when the person himself appeared on the other side of the court in receiving position, and Tooru ended up watching real Wakatoshi keep volleyball Wakatoshi from hitting the ground.

"Nice serve," he said, expression and voice neutral, which Tooru had tried telling him was all wrong for a compliment.

He took another ball out of the cart and bounced it a few times. "Thought you already hit the showers," he said, his voice far less neutral, tinged with sour annoyance. He'd toned it down since both the head and assistant coach told him off for treating a teammate "with open disdain," as they'd put it. But he was only human and having to spend long hours every day practicing with the former rival he never managed to beat took its toil.

"Too crowded. I'll go later."

Tooru snorted. They had state-of-the-art facilities, everything spacious and pristine for the famous university's athletic center. He really doubted even a giant like Wakatoshi couldn't have found room to spare, but he didn't push it. If he pushed it, he'd start yelling, and then _he'd_ get yelled at, which was a lot less enjoyable.

He tossed the ball in his hand up, trying something different this time. He was known for his killer jump serves (almost to his displeasure at times, because would it kill everyone to remember that he was a setter, not a pinch server?) but that was precisely why he wanted to add a jump floater serve to his repertoire. He wanted to perfect it and use it for the first time against a team he hated, just so he could revel in their expressions as he crushed them in an entirely new way. The thought made him almost giddy until the ball he hit crashed into the net and fell uselessly on his own side of the court. He scowled at it and reached for another.

Wakatoshi was silent as Tooru went through the entire cart of balls, getting in very few successful jump floaters, but more than the last time he tried. He received a lot of them, never wincing from the force or breathing audibly from exertion.

"Monster," Tooru muttered, the impact of palm against volleyball loud enough to drown it out.

They cleaned up the court together, as they were the only two yet to leave the gym. Tooru became uncomfortably conscious of that fact when the cart was put away and they walked into the locker room together.

Wakatoshi, of course, had no sensibility whatsoever and stripped in front of his locker unabashedly. Tooru busied himself fiddling around with the extra bandages and kneepads in his own locker until he heard Wakatoshi walk into the shower area and turn the water on.

"Stop being ridiculous," he scolded himself in his locker's mirror, making a face at his sweaty, flushed reflection. He undressed and headed for the showers, taking refuge under a spray far from Wakatoshi.

Who, naturally, did not take the hint.

Tooru did his best to ignore the fact that Wakatoshi had moved to be less than five feet away, focusing on his feet and the feeling of water turning his hair from tangled mess back to silk.

"Oikawa."

"Wrong number. Try again later."

Tooru closed his eyes as he finished rinsing off, but soon regretted it, because when he reopened them, Wakatoshi was closer than before. It was like a horror movie and Tooru was the idiot about to die because he didn't obey the obvious signals to get out while there was a chance.

"I want to touch you," Wakatoshi said.

Tooru's fingers fumbled and slipped off the knob when he went to turn the water off. He braced himself for a repetitive, irritating argument and turned to face Wakatoshi at last, pretending they weren't both naked. "Honestly, Ushiwaka-chan, you're like a stray cat! Feed it once and it'll keep coming back!"

"You want the same thing. Am I wrong?" There was no real question in his voice.

"And they say I have an inflated ego." Tooru flicked wet bangs out of his eyes, though with the shower spray still on, they were weighted right back down. "I'm tired, Ushiwaka. We practiced all day. The only thing I want is stretch out on my dorm floor and watch overrated dramas until I fall asleep."

Wakatoshi frowned, but he thankfully backed off, leaving the shower area altogether. Tooru waited until he was reasonably sure he was gone before following suit, dressing in record speed in hopes of making it out of the gym without any more awkward encounters.

-

It took Tooru three months to speak to Wakatoshi outside of practice, and after that party he wished he remembered less of, it took him another month again.

"Are you a virgin, Ushiwaka-chan?"

He'd posed the question suddenly one day after practice. He was sitting on a bench leaned back against a row of lockers, filing his nails with the file angled so that he could see the blur of Wakatoshi's reflection in the polished metal. He both saw and heard Wakatoshi become motionless, but it was only for a moment before he resumed packing his gym bag.

"I do not see what that is relevant to," he responded.

Tooru put the file down and swung his legs over to the opposite side of the bench so he could see Wakatoshi's expression, in some probably vain hope that he'd get a rise out of him for once. "There are some things it's relevant to. For example, if you're a virgin, I'll fuck you."

Wakatoshi had stared down at him impassively for what felt like a very long time. Then, in one stride, he was in front of Tooru with one hand pressed to the row of lockers behind the bench. Though Tooru could've slid off the other way, he felt trapped anyway by Wakatoshi's overwhelming pressure alone.

"You mean," Wakatoshi said calmly, "that I would fuck you."

Initially, Tooru's bewilderment was that Wakatoshi had said fuck, because he didn't think any bad words were programmed into his robotic brain. But then came the far greater bewilderment that Wakatoshi actually answered in a way that suggested there was a universe where one day, maybe, he and Tooru would be in bed together. He had to be serious, because Wakatoshi wasn't the kind of guy to respond to a hypothetical in any way that was less than literal.

Tooru shuddered. "Thanks, I'm officially turned off for the rest of my life. Hope you're happy."

When Wakatoshi straightened back up, he'd hopped off the bench, tossed the file into his locker, and left without a look back.

-

Or that was how he'd like to remember it happening. He would like to remember not hesitating in the doorway, and not ever thinking of Wakatoshi's words again, and not waking up to hot, sticky dreams about what impossibilities could be made possible. He would like to not have a certain series of numbers memorized, and he would like to not be dialing them right then after the most unsatisfying orgasm of his life.

"Stupid Ushiwaka," he growled, knocking the box of tissues off the bed out of misplaced spite.

Coming in his own hand a few times a week used to be enough. It was just Tooru's awful luck that every mistake he made seemed to have permanent consequences, and fucking Wakatoshi was nothing but a mistake.

He answered the phone on the third ring. "Ushijima Wakatoshi speaking."

"Well, stop speaking and get over here," Tooru demanded, covering up want with impatience.

Wakatoshi went quiet before hanging up, and in less than five minutes, Tooru was unlocking the door for him.

-

"You could have said yes in the first place if this was what you wanted," Wakatoshi pointed out very matter-of-factly as he moved his fingers in and out of Tooru.

Tooru glared over his shoulder at Wakatoshi, but his expression lost its intensity when Wakatoshi pushed in deeper and made him gasp. His fingers dug into the sheets and he laid his head back down, face cool against the sheets as the rest of his body heated up. He hated that Wakatoshi kept his composure when they did this. He should've felt something, some sort of emotion whether positive or negative, to fuck someone who'd always been in his periphery but never close enough to touch, not until now.

Wakatoshi stopped moving. "Oikawa."

"What?" Tooru hissed, using all his willpower not to fuck himself on Wakatoshi's fingers.

A hand, apparently Wakatoshi's free hand since his other one had turned into a statue inside him, curled under his jaw and forced him to look back again. Wakatoshi studied his face and Tooru reddened. This was why he always insisted on being fucked from behind. It was, maybe ironically, far less vulnerable.

"What?" he repeated, pulling out of his grip but not yet breaking eye contact. "Did you forget how sex works? Because I'm not in the mood to read you wikihow page about it, sorry!"

"Why did you change your mind?" Wakatoshi asked.

"Who cares! Just fuck me before I change it again!"

Wakatoshi's mouth set into a straight line and he mercifully began to move his fingers again. Tooru sighed in relief, dropping his head back down. His every sense was raw and alight, so he could easily hear Wakatoshi open a packet and then a bottle. He closed his eyes and let Wakatoshi take it from there, pulling his hips up.

"You look good like this, Oikawa," he said.

Tooru wanted to kick him in the face and ask him what the hell kind of messed up compliment that was supposed to be, why he thought anyone would want to be complimented on how good they looked with their face against the sheets and their ass in the air, but he didn't get the chance to before Wakatoshi pushed into him.

Wakatoshi was rough, and that was the only reason Tooru could tolerate it. It was rough and feverish and fast, because Wakatoshi had no restraint, not with volleyball, not with words, not with sex.

Tooru buried his face further in the sheets, moving his fist up and down his cock. "Iwa-chan," he mouthed against cotton, too quiet for even himself to hear. "Hajime, Hajime."

That was the other benefit of this position. When he didn't have to see Wakatoshi's face, he could imagine whoever he wanted pressed against his body.

Wakatoshi knocked his hand away and replaced it with his own, jerking Tooru off to the brutal pace he'd set. He was into it enough that he was finally breathing hard, finally making sounds. Some of them might've been Tooru's name, but he tuned those out.

Tooru came with a shiver and a long, low moan. Wakatoshi thrusted into him a few more times, then Tooru could feel his orgasm rack through them both. After a pause, he pulled out of Tooru, who heard the soft plunk of a used condom drop into a trash can.

"Get out," he muttered when he got his voice back.

Instead, Wakatoshi sat back down on the bed and placed his hands on Tooru's back. He immediately tensed up. If Wakatoshi was going for round two, Tooru would have to tell him to find a different fuck buddy, one with inhuman stamina.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Relax."

"I could maybe do that better if you weren't-!"

He broke off when Wakatoshi's hands started moving in firm, soothing circles. A massage. Wakatoshi was giving him a post-coital massage.

Slowly, almost against his will, he began to relax. Wakatoshi's hands moved from his back to his neck and shoulders. He took his time, kneading with force that didn't quite breach the threshold of painful. Tooru felt himself loosening up and, quite embarrassingly, drifting off.

He came back to himself when Wakatoshi made his way down one arm and started massaging his hand, giving extra care and attention to the callouses on his fingers, his tough fingertips. Tooru was proud of his hands, not necessarily what they looked like but what they could do. He could sense a hint of that in what Wakatoshi was doing, some slight reverence that he didn't know how to feel about.

He covered it up by asking, "Where did you learn to give massages, Ushiwaka-chan?"

Wakatoshi continued to caress his hand as he said, "You do not answer my questions, Oikawa."

Tooru pulled his hand away, fed up. "How very karmic of you. Piss off, Ushiwaka." He rolled over and tugged the cover around him, pretending to fall asleep so that he could be alone again.

-

When Tooru got out of his second shower of the day, his roommate Yuta was back. He was a middle blocker and damn good at it, but his reading of any situation off the court was generally way off. Tooru was more than thankful for that.

"So who was it this time?" Yuta asked in a knowing voice. He kept typing on his phone while he talked, a habit of his that made it seem like he was keeping courtroom-worthy records of all his conversations, though from what Tooru could tell, he mainly used his phone to type up uninspired tweets in pursuit of viral fame. "A cheerleader? Someone from another university? Oh, was it that Mina chick on the girls volleyball team again?"

Tooru, of course, couldn't remember a Mina being in his bed in the first place, but he didn't correct any of Yuta's suppositions. He just airily said, "I don't think you know her."

"I might," Yuta replied indignantly. "Was she, you know, good?"

Tooru wasn't entirely sure what Yuta or any of his other male friends would consider good, though he had a vague idea of what it might entail. A girl who didn't mind giving head or one who didn't make him use a condom, maybe. He didn't want to think about any of that, but if he pretended Yuta hadn't gotten the pronoun wrong, he could answer honestly. "Yeah. Real good."

Yuta sighed. "It's so unfair. Life is so easy for you. You're great at volleyball _and_ you have girls falling at your feet."

Tooru smiled. "I was just born under a lucky star, I guess."

-

Tooru felt all eyes on him as he walked across campus, and it was nothing new. He hummed to himself, bought a coffee at the cafe next to the bookstore, and let it warm his hands as he strolled downtown, taking sips at crosswalks and lost in thought about volleyball, as usual. Their team had just finished an intense training camp and they had the rest of the week off to recover, but Tooru was already itching to get back on the court and work on his serves.

His phone vibrated in his pocket, stealing attention away from the game simulation he'd started running in his head, and he pulled it out to read a new message.

 

_Iwa-chan: our training camp's over tomorrow. wanna meet up?_

 

Tooru frowned thoughtfully and tapped his fingers lightly against his phone case as he decided how to respond.

 

_Me: only if you come to tokyo. i'm a busy man, you know!_

 

He hadn't been back to Hajime's college since that night, and he didn't think he ever wanted to see it again. Hajime probably knew it, but he never said as much.

 

_Iwa-chan: like i'm not. but whatever, i'll come_

 

Tooru took the last drink of his coffee and dropped the empty cup into a recycling bin outside a convenience store. He started to leave, but decided he might as well pick up the latest copy of Volleyball Monthly while he was there. But when he went inside, it wasn't that magazine, the only one he'd ever been in the habit of reading, that caught his eye.

"Olympic hopeful Oikawa Tooru breaks the hearts of his female fans for good!"

"I did what?" he murmured to himself in confusion, picking up the gossip magazine he'd sometimes seen his sister reading when she wanted a reason not to do homework. He flipped through the pages and froze.

It was a nightmare worse than the one that had been haunting him for months. He felt very cold all at once and he wanted to believe his coffee had been spiked with something, that the barista had some unknown grudge against him.

"The truth comes out... and so do star athletes Oikawa Tooru and Ushijima Wakatoshi!"

He closed the magazine with the kind of calmness that only came from being numb. He put it back on the shelf and found the single-stall bathroom in the back of the store. After locking the door, he realized his phone was vibrating again and he checked it, needing whatever distraction he could get.

 

_Iwa-chan: we should go to the same restaurant as last time, the one with the good fried tofu_

 

_Me: iwa-chan_

 

_Iwa-chan: what_

 

_Me: don't come to tokyo_

 

_Iwa-chan: ? are you okay. what the hell are you saying_

 

_Me: i'm not going to be here_

 

Tooru turned the screen off and shoved the phone into his pocket. Sometime while he was splashing cold water against his face, he finally felt more than numbness, and he turned the water pressure up so he wouldn't have to hear himself do something as pathetic as cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I took a break from multi-chapter fics after finishing i wanna ruin our friendship (if you supported me during that fic, thanks so much!) but this idea and the urge to write more hq fic wouldn't leave me alone. I hope you're all ready for another angsty ride.
> 
> Talk to me at runicfairy.tumblr.com!


	2. Chapter One

Tooru discovered he was in love with Hajime at age eight, when his sister told him he was.

"Listen, Tooru-chan," she said one afternoon after pretending to lose to him at a board game. "It's okay if you like Hajime-chan the way other boys like girls, but you can't ever tell anyone, okay?"

Tooru blinked at her and then started to reassemble the board pieces so he could beat her fair and square this time. He stopped when she put a hand on his shoulder and waited for him to look up again.

"What?" he whined. "Let's play one more time."

"Did you hear me?"

"Yeah. You think I want to hold Hajime-chan's hand." He shrugged, because he couldn't deny it, but he hadn't known it was weird and that he was supposed to want to hold a girl's hand instead. He didn't see why it mattered whether Hajime was a boy or a girl, but his sister was a teenager and seemed to know more about these things.

"You can want to now, but try to outgrow it. It's not _bad_ , but it'll make your life a lot harder." She patted his head and he scowled, folding the board up.

"If you didn't want to play again, you could've just said so." He couldn't think of another reason she was procrastinating with such weird talk.

His sister shook her head and sighed and that was the end of that, until Tooru was a teenager himself and realized he very much liked Hajime the way all the other boys liked girls.

He tried not to. He tried looking at the dirty magazines his friends hid under desks and huddled around during lunch. He tried getting a girlfriend. He tried taking her up to his bedroom when no one else was home and getting undressed and climbing on top of her and doing what his friends had talked about with smug grins.

Everything he tried made him feel dirtier and wronger, and still he never managed to outgrow his feelings like his sister had told him to.

-

It was even worse than Tooru had imagined, and he had a very good imagination for worst case scenarios.

Every article he read was a remix of the same facts, and they were this:

On Thursday afternoon, Wakatoshi had been interviewed for a local newspaper. When asked how he was adjusting to a new team after playing with many of the same players for years at Shiratorizawa Academy, he told them he was fine. He got along with his new teammates well.

He was even dating one.

_He was even dating one._

Tooru crumpled up all the articles after reading them, tearing them from magazines and newspapers and then ripping them into tiny pieces that still taunted him when he flung them into the trash.

It was hard to pick what the most despairing part was, but the most revolting part was clear. Ushijima Wakatoshi, with his obliviousness to social protocol and his remarkable ability to say the worst possible thing at the worst possible time, was genuinely under the impression that because Tooru slept with him on occasion, they were together. A _couple_. And now all his fans, all his schoolmates, all his teammates, the sporting world- they were all under that impression too.

"Fuck," Tooru hissed. "He ruined fucking _everything_ again."

And he'd ruined it for good. Tooru knew that, because he'd been getting calls nonstop, many from his parents, and he didn't have to answer to know what kind of reaction he would get.

His mind was still working desperately. He had to fix things. If he just came up with the perfect plan, used the perfect smile, he could salvage his reputation and his career. He could play off what Wakatoshi had said as a misunderstanding and-

No. It was already too late. And it was his own damn fault, because he'd always known going to the same school as Wakatoshi was going to be the end of him. He just hadn't thought it'd be because of this.

Now that he knew the extent of the damage, he knew he had to get away from it. He couldn't stand the thought of being anywhere near Wakatoshi. He didn't want to wait around and see Yuta's look of disgusted judgment when he came back to their room, or walk across campus just to see the groups of girls who used to fawn over him suddenly giving him the cold shoulder.

He pulled out an old sports bag and stuffed it with enough clothes for a long weekend. After looking over his appearance in the mirror, he fished out some oversized sunglasses and changed his shirt for a loose sweater. It was a poor disguise, but it was better than nothing.

He slung the bag over his shoulder, slipped out of the dorm complex without being seen, and took the first bus to the station.

-

Hajime was waiting for him.

Tooru hadn't asked him to, hadn't even told him what was wrong or why he was going back to Miyagi that day, only that he would be there instead of Tokyo and that they would have to postpone meeting up. But he must've seen the news and decided to go home to Miyagi too, figuring Tooru would need him. Tooru did, but he didn't want to think so.

They fell into silent step together as they left the station. Tooru's bag banged against his thigh as they walked and he focused on the constant thump and the slight pain of the forming bruise it left behind. He adjusted his sunglasses whenever he saw the back of someone who looked familiar and was relieved when they didn't run into anyone he'd need to hide from.

Hajime broke the silence when they reached an intersection and Tooru continued on towards the street they lived on. "Come this way," he said, pulling at Tooru's elbow and then setting off in a different direction.

Tooru raised an eyebrow, but he followed. After a few more minutes of walking, Hajime pushed the door of an old and very familiar cafe open. It was the decades-old Hanamaki family bakery, specializing in milk bread that Tooru always tried to get free samples of, usually with success, since his friends' parents tended to adore him. Tooru guessed that if Hajime was bringing him here, there would be two others about to greet him. He took off his sunglasses with great reluctance, wishing he had a better excuse to wear them inside so he wouldn't feel so vulnerably open about his expression, which he was working hard to keep composed.

It looked like Takahiro was manning the register that afternoon, though as soon as they came in, he took his apron off and came around the counter to flip the open sign on the door over. It was downright unsettling for Tooru to run into an old teammate without some sassy, sarcastic greeting coming from both sides, but the tension in the air let him know Takahiro knew, too.

Tooru braced himself for whatever was coming. He'd never intended for his friends to find out. He would've been perfectly fine with his secret dying with him, Hajime, and Wakatoshi, the only two who had ever found out, and even that had been inadvertent. Except for one mistake of a night, he'd been so good at keeping his feelings to himself.

In the back room, the one customers could cluster around tables and eat their pastries in, Issei was already sitting, sipping somed ice latte through a straw. When the other three came in, he looked straight at Tooru and pushed a plate piled with milk bread towards him.

Tooru appreciated the gesture, but no amount of comfort food was going to make him feel better, and he'd had no appetite since finding out that Wakatoshi had opened his big mouth. Nonetheless, he sat down across from Issei and picked at one of the pieces, allowing himself one heavy sigh as they all sat waiting for who would talk first.

Tooru ended up doing it himself, sick of just sitting there pitifully while everyone acted like he'd break from the pressure of a single word. "Yeah, I'm gay. You can say it. Everyone knows now, anyway." He flicked a crumb off his finger, watching it arc and land back on the plate, pretending he wasn't purposefully avoiding his friends' eyes.

The tension in the air dissipated just a bit with the permission to speak. "Fuck, Oikawa," Takahiro groaned, rubbing at his temples. "Do you know how weird it is to find out one of your best friends is into guys from the morning news?"

"Probably not as weird as finding out the whole world knows when you see your face on all the magazine covers in a convenience store," Tooru answered icily.

"Point taken. But you _know_ we don't care about that, or you should, after we've been friends this long. You could've told us," he said, picking up a creampuff from a different plate and biting into it with nervous vigor.

"I get why you didn't," Issei said, putting his latte down. "And anyway, that's not the issue now."

"Yeah, no kidding," Tooru scowled, dropping his head into his hands. "I'm going to kill Ushiwaka. I'm literally going to kill him this time."

"Seriously, what the hell was he thinking?" Hajime said, a scowl of his own darkening his face. "There was no fucking reason for him to say that in an interview."

"Where did he get a dumb idea like that, anyway?" Takahiro snorted.

Oikawa flushed red and stared down at the plate of milk break pointedly. That was a question he wouldn't be answering, though his silence was telling enough.

Issei cleared his throat, then changed the subject with as much tact as was possible. "What's done is done. You can't let the fallout get to you, Oikawa."

"You mean the fallout of my own fans and teammates turning on me because they think I'm gross and abnormal now?"

It hurt him to say those words aloud, associating them with himself, with the way he was born and hadn't been able to change, but he already knew he was going to be called that and worse. It was only a matter of time before morbid curiosity won out and he checked the comments section on some online article and saw what he was being called, what Wakatoshi was being called too. He found it very hard to muster up pity for Wakatoshi, though. He'd done this to himself, and the worst part was, it probably wouldn't even matter to him. He was too thickheaded to care what other people said and he was too damn good at volleyball for his reputation to take a blow from personal circumstances. Oikawa didn't have the cushion of being a genius.

"That's exactly what I mean," Issei said evenly, not taking offense. "People are idiots. Being different is the biggest crime you can commit in this country, and everyone loves a scandal. But nothing they say defines you. You have to remember that."

Tooru tried to calm down and let Issei's words make sense, but it was hard. He sighed and forced himself to take an actual bite of the milk bread. His sour mood ruined its sweetness, but he swallowed it anyway before pushing the plate away and standing.

"I've got to get home," he said.

Hajime exchanged a glance with Issei and Takahiro, which was enough to make Tooru instantly paranoid.

"What is it?" he asked suspiciously.

Hajime's face was grimmer than Tooru could remember. "I'm sorry, Oikawa. Your sister called me, since you weren't answering her, and-"

"And your parents are assholes," Takahiro muttered, looking grim too.

Tooru felt winded. "Meaning...?"

Hajime seemed to struggle to get the rest of his explanation out. "Look, she said she'd call me back when everything was moved. My parents are bringing your stuff to our place."

Tooru bl inked and slowly looked away. It felt like his mind was coated in something sticky and muffling, making it hard to process what should've been a simple statement.

"They kicked me out," he said blandly, after a long pause.

"You still have a home," Hajime told him. "You always will."

"Stop."

None of Hajime's reassurances were making him feel any better. He turned and left, heading for the front door of the bakery, so many thoughts fighting for attention that his mind was a meaningless buzz. He heard the scrape of chairs being pushed back, then Hajime telling them not to follow him, and then he was out in oppressively fresh air.

He walked in a winding path, not quite heading towards his ex-home and not quite heading away from it either. Occasionally, almost like it was a game where he kept hitting high score, he checked to see how many missed messages and calls he had. Ten from Hajime, after he'd stopped texting him back the previous day. Twenty from his parents, as well as texts he was even more afraid to open now.

A sudden new text from Wakatoshi.

He almost tripped in a crevice in the sidewalk, so focused was he on his phone. After he recovered his balance, he clicked on the message from the last person he wanted to hear from.

_Ushibaka: Please answer your phone, Oikawa. ___

__"Please go to hell, Ushiwaka," he muttered in response, shoving his phone back into his pocket and finally finding his way to the street he'd grown up on. There was a memory attached to almost every square foot of space here, most of them involving Hajime and volleyball. He looked down the stretch of houses to where his was a smudge against the sky far away, then he turned into the gates of the Iwaizumi residence._ _

__No one was there, but the door was unlocked, so he let himself in. The entryway was a mess of overturned shoes and slippers, and bags Tooru recognized were laying nearby. He followed a trail of his own belongings up the stairs into Hajime's room. Here, everything from his old clothes to his books to his posters were piled up in the corners. He imagined Hajime's parents were heading for another load, and he knew that when he saw them, he would have to thank them. He didn't know what his parents would've done with his things if someone hadn't saved them. They would think of them as tainted, like their son._ _

__He felt like a middle schooler again, helpless between a towering wall and approaching footsteps, his efforts reduced to nothing over and over._ _

__He drew in a deep breath, grabbed Hajime's pillow, pressed it to his face, and screamed. It made him feel just a little better. "Why the _hell_ did you tell?" he shouted, his muffled voice softening the sharp edges of his feelings, too. "Why couldn't you just keep your mouth shut? Why did I ever start fucking you in the first place?"_ _

__When he was done shouting, and when Hajime and his parents had brought in the last of his things and forced tea and a meal in him before leaving him alone, at last he answered the phone when it rang._ _

__"Ushiwaka," he said, not managing to sound angry at all, only hurt. He might've said mean things to Ushijima since middle school and he might've been an ass to him whenever they were together, but he'd never done anything half so horrid as outing him to the world. He inhaled and prepared to yell the same things he had into the pillow earlier, but all the came out was a broken sigh. "You better be suffering as much as I am."_ _

__-_ _

__Wakatoshi sat in a wooden desk chair, focused on the screen of his laptop, where images of his old teammates were partitioned on the screen. Satori had installed a video chat program on his computer before he left for college and insisted he actually use it, so this wasn't the first time he'd found himself looking at Satori, Eita, and Reon from hundreds of kilometers away. Satori was always swaying back and forth, like sitting in a chair felt too unnatural, and in fact he often picked up his laptop and relocated while they chatted. Eita and Reon were always calmer, until Eita snapped at Satori for talking too much, while Reon kept smiling on._ _

__But today, they were all more serious than usual, and Wakatoshi knew it was his fault. Satori was rhythmically tapping his forehead against his desk in defeat before finally raising his head and giving him a piercing stare. "Wakatoshi-kun! I thought you knew that the first and only rule of volleyball interviews was to only talk about volleyball!"_ _

__"My teammates are a part of volleyball," Wakatoshi responded, feeling unusually defensive but coming across as stoic as ever._ _

__"Yeah, but what you do with them in the bedroom isn't! Or, if it is, I don't wanna know about it!" Satori jabbed his finger at the screen and Wakatoshi could almost feel the pressure of his virtual poke._ _

__Eita sighed and put his chin on his fist, looking thoughtful. "The damage is done. What's important is what you're going to do now."_ _

__Wakatoshi felt as frustrated as his friends looked. Everyone was referring to his relationship with Tooru as "damage" and acting as though he'd committed some great sin by being honest about it. He wasn't stupid. He knew it wasn't common for guys to like guys. But he'd never been able to understand the hush around it, the forcing of people who were different into closets far too cramped and uncomfortable to be healthy._ _

__"I am not ashamed of what I said," he insisted._ _

__"That's not the _point_ ," Eita shot back. "You know we don't care if you're gay and we know you don't care if everyone else does. But if you suddenly announce it in an interview that gets national coverage, you can't expect no backlash."_ _

__Wakatoshi opened his mouth to respond, but Leon spoke first, his typical gentle smile in place but his voice more serious than Wakatoshi had ever heard it. "How is Oikawa handling things?"_ _

__Wakatoshi closed his mouth. Tooru had been avoiding his attempts at contact and when he'd gone to his room, no one answered his knock, so Wakatoshi was not even sure he was still on campus. He had expected Tooru to be a little mad that he went public with their relationship without asking first, but Tooru was always getting mad about this and that, to the point that Wakatoshi was all but immune to it. No matter what he did, Tooru acted like it was a bad idea and that he should've done the opposite, so Wakatoshi had simply decided to do what he wanted to do and what he was sure Tooru would eventually accept as the best course of action, too._ _

__But some pinprick remained, a feeling he could not name like a slender needle tip grazing his skin, ready to press through and find blood._ _

__"We have not spoken since then. He may be busy," Wakatoshi finally said._ _

__Satori groaned and let his head fall back at a sharp angle, so that for a moment he looked almost decapitated. Then he swung his head back up and said, "That means he's pissed, Waka. No offense, but are you two actually dating?"_ _

__"Yes," Ushijima said. It would make little sense for them to be doing the things they did together if they were not._ _

__"Listen, Ushijima," Eita said, drawing his attention back to his section of the screen. "Oikawa isn't like you. Anyone who's met him can tell how concerned he is with appearances, and being gay is not a good appearance."_ _

__Ushijima considered that. Perhaps Eita had a point. Tooru showed the public one face and the people who actually knew him another. He was an angel to his fans and a demon to his opponents. He tossed to Wakatoshi with evident trust in games, and then spat insults at him when they were alone._ _

__But still, Tooru had become his, and willingly. It had been his idea from the start, his words that brought them together that first time, his invitations that continued it. There was a third Tooru, besides his public face and his private face, one that only Tooru himself knew and that others could only hope for glimpses of. Wakatoshi believed it was that Tooru who kept calling to him, and that it was the true Tooru, the one if he was patient and persistent enough, he could find through the other layers._ _

__"He will come around," Wakatoshi said._ _

__"Or he won't," Eita said simply. "Either way, don't wait around to see which it is. You need to apologize to him."_ _

__Leon nodded. "An apology is the least you can do to smooth things over."_ _

__Satori bounced in with his own suggestion. "And you better do it fast! The longer you let him sulk and think about how mad he is, the worse it's going to be!"_ _

__Sometimes, Wakatoshi was surprised by how well his friends understood Tooru's behavior, though he had started to realize it might be his own fault, his propensity to describe what Tooru had done or said until they felt like they knew him, too._ _

__"I will take your advice into consideration," he said, looking towards his cell phone. Perhaps it was time to give him another call, and to leave a more insistent message than before._ _

__"Please do," Reon said._ _

__He signed out and clicked the most recent number on his phone's outgoing list, redialing it. He was prepared to hear Tooru's answering machine and was surprised when he heard his actual voice instead._ _

__"You better be suffering as much as I am," Tooru said, and Wakatoshi thought he heard a sniffle._ _

__The needle pierced through._ _

__"Oikawa," he began._ _

__"Is that all you have to say? My name?" Tooru snapped. His anger was loud and clear, but it wasn't his usual performative anger. It was something raw and bolstered by real pain. "You sure had plenty to say to those interviewers!"_ _

__"I only told them the truth," Wakatoshi said, feeling a little defensive._ _

__"The truth?" Tooru barked out a harsh laugh. "Are you kidding me? Ushiwaka, I hate you."_ _

__He said it so matter-of-factly that it actually hurt. Wakatoshi's eyebrows furrowed. "But we-"_ _

__"Sex doesn't mean anything! It just means that you were convenient and decent enough. And for that, you ruined my entire life, you bastard."_ _

__Tooru had often enough made dramatic claims about some perceived injury Wakatoshi had done him, but somehow Wakatoshi felt he was sincere this time. Tooru's theatrics were easy enough to brush off most of the time, but serious Tooru was different. Serious Tooru could tear through people like a downpour through spiders' silk._ _

__But Wakatoshi couldn't understand why he was reacting this way. "What did I ruin, Oikawa? Are you that upset that other people know you like men now? That, if nothing else, is the truth."_ _

__"I never even told my friends that!" he blew up. "I never told my family."_ _

__"And you planned to spend the rest of your life that way?" Wakatoshi asked, feeling impatient again. He could never fathom why Tooru chose to make his life purposefully difficult._ _

__"Yeah, actually. That would be much better than this."_ _

__"How?" Wakatoshi asked, still perplexed. "Why do you wish to lie about who you are to keep the favor of people who do not matter? If someone is going to reject you over this, it is better for them not to be your fan in the first place."_ _

__Tooru didn't reply for a long time, and Wakatoshi began to worry that he'd been hung up on and hadn't even noticed. But then he heard another telltale sniffle._ _

__"Then would it have been better for them not to be my family in the first place, either?"_ _

__Wakatoshi blinked. "What do you mean?"_ _

__Then the needle burrowed deeper as he figured out the answer himself. It was not just about losing fans._ _

__Tooru had lost something more._ _

__"Just forget it, Ushiwaka." Tooru sounded tired suddenly. Deflated. "You'll never understand. I already knew you wouldn't. Just leave me alone. You owe me that much."_ _

__He hung up. Ushiwaka lowered his phone and stared at it for a long time._ _

___Ah_ , he thought._ _

___I was mistaken._ _ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the comments and kudos! Next chapter will feature more direct interaction between Ushijima and Oikawa. I love Ushijima a lot, but he doesn't always make the most sensible decisions (even if he always thinks he does). It was fun to write his interaction with Shiratorizawa's old players, too, and you can expect more appearances from at least one of them in the future.


	3. Chapter Two

The worst part of any scandal was the initial damage control, those hellish days right after the news broke when the person involved had to come up with the perfect excuse or the perfect apology and assure the world with a smile that they weren't really a scandalous type of person, it was all a misunderstanding.

Tooru had always strived to keep his reputation spotless so that he wouldn't be in a situation where he had to clean it up in the first place. That Wakatoshi had shattered his picture-perfect persona with a handful of words was both depressing and infuriating. Tooru knew it was too late to convince the world he wasn't gay. His parents had already thrown him out without so much as a goodbye, and Wakatoshi couldn't be trusted not to make things worse if Tooru tried to lie his way out of this.

Being back in Miyagi had given him a small bubble of protection, allowing him to breathe and collect himself before returning to face the backlash. It was probably pathetic, but he'd let himself hide away in Hajime's bedroom the whole time, and no one had tried to stop him. Hajime had tried to distract him and Issei and Takahiro had invited him to play volleyball a few times, but Tooru hadn't been in any mood to play along.

The day he had to go back, since practice would be starting again early the following morning after their short post-training camp reprieve, he finally emerged from the Iwaizumi household and roamed around Miyagi by himself, right after dawn when the only people awake were shopkeepers sweeping the street in front of their store and old women tending to their potted plants.

He had a game plan. But it required Wakatoshi to cooperate, and that was the wild card Tooru was worrying about as he walked, hands deep in his pockets and shoulder slightly hunched, the position he often assumed without realizing it when he was deep in thought.

He was turning the corner at the intersection where he could walk right to Aoba Jousai if he kept going when he heard someone call to him.

It was the voice itself, not hearing his name, that snapped him out of his reverie so quickly. He whirled around to find Wakatoshi stepping out of his car, closing the door too hard but probably without meaning to.

They hadn't spoken since that phone call, though Wakatoshi had tried to contact him several times afterwards. Tooru had almost blocked his number, but knew that was nothing but a short-term solution. Though he'd learned to work with him as a teammate, and knew the kind of blissed-out pleasure he could provide with that muscular body, he now felt the same old revulsion he knew from his early days of facing Shiratorizawa, the disgust he'd gotten when he had to shake Wakatoshi's hand before each match as opposing captains and knew Wakatoshi already considered his side the winner.

"What are you doing here, Ushijima?" he scowled.

"You wouldn't answer my phone calls, so I came here," he said. He didn't have any of the anger or dread in his voice that Tooru did, and it wasn't fair. Tooru wondered if he was cognizant of the backlash at all, or it was just background noise to him.

"Did you think that maybe, just maybe, I wasn't answering your calls precisely because I don't _want_ to talk to you? I was heading back to Tokyo today anyway, you didn't have to come here."

"I can drive you." He motioned to his car, the same pale silver Lexus whose interior Tooru could picture through a drunken memory.

Tooru sighed, weighing his options. He really didn't want to be in an enclosed space with Wakatoshi for the duration of the trip back to Tokyo, but it wasn't like he could hide from him for the rest of his life, or even for another day. And he needed to talk to him, anyway. Actually talk, though slapping him or yelling at him also sounded like appealing options.

"Fine. But I need to get my things from Iwa-chan's place first. And _no_ , I don't want you to drive me there," he said, cutting off the offer he could sense coming. "Just... wait here for me."

He nodded and got back into his car, turning off the engine and saying nothing as Tooru passed by, heading back in the direction he'd come from.

It took a couple of shakes to wake Hajime up from his deep sleep. He blinked a few times, then rose up, stretching and popping his neck. "You're up early," he said, sleepiness softening his words.

"I'm heading back to Tokyo."

That woke Hajime up completely, his eyes becoming alert. "Right now?"

"Yeah. Ushiwaka's going to drive me." He said it grudgingly, still feeling tempted to leave Wakatoshi waiting all day and get back to Tokyo another way.

"Wait, he's here? In Miyagi?" Hajime jumped out of bed and pulled on clothes haphazardly, clear anger seeping into his quick movements.

This was the main reason Tooru had told Wakatoshi to wait where he was. The last thing he wanted was for Hajime to potentially get in a fight with Wakatoshi, since it would do nothing to lessen the unfolding scandal if he suddenly had a black eye. And that was assuming Hajime could do any damage to that walking cement block.

"Go back to bed, Iwa-chan, I didn't wake you up so you could confront him or whatever. I can handle him myself, okay?" Tooru said, trying to usher him away from his sock drawer and back into bed.

Hajime didn't look up from switching out mismatched socks for an actual pair. "I don't doubt that. But it pisses me off to think about what he did. You don't have to go with him, hell, if you don't want to take the train, I'll drive you back."

Tooru almost could've smiled at that, how fervently loyal Hajime was when Tooru needed him to be. But it hurt as much as it helped.

_If he'd just felt the same, if he'd just kissed me back, if he was like me_ , the unfair demon that lived in Tooru's heart or maybe was his heart started to chant.

"Thanks, Iwa-chan, but there's no point in putting off the inevitable. If everyone thinks we're dating, then that's what we'll have to let them think."

Hajime blinked, then looked horrified. "You're going to-"

"Bye, Iwa-chan!"

Tooru grabbed his bag and waved as he headed for the door, trying not to give Hajime the chance to protest any more. But Hajime made it to the door as he did, grabbing the edge of it to stop Tooru from opening it fully, so that he had to pause.

"Iwa-chan, what is it?" he whined.

Hajime waited until he gave in and looked at him before answering. "I'm here for you, Oikawa. Whenever and for whatever. Matsukawa and Hanamaki would say the same. So don't listen to what any idiot has to say about you. You should know you're better than that by now."

Tooru bit the inside of his lip. His and Hajime's friendship was so largely composed of playful barbs and bickering that when they got serious, it always caught him off guard a little. He nodded, and when Hajime held a fist up, he bumped his against it. Like high school, like they were children again. Maybe it was immature, but it made him feel like the world was a little less scary.

When he made it back to the intersection, Wakatoshi was still there, of course, reading a book in the driver's seat. Tooru looked left and right, like he expected a swarm of reporters to rush out and photograph him getting into Wakatoshi's car, but there was no one around. He hoped he could say the same when they arrived back in Tokyo. It wasn't like they were pro-level athletes (yet). If Wakatoshi hadn't been part of the Japan Youth National Team, if Tooru wasn't a perfect mixture of athleticism and good looks, their secret might not have been appealing enough to make national news in the first place.

But it was no use rehashing it all and trying to figure out what could've prevented all this in the first place. Tooru walked around to the passenger side and got into the car, slamming the door quite purposely.

Wakatoshi closed his book and put it on the backseat before adjusting the mirrors and turning the car back on. He pulled out onto the empty street and started driving in silence. For awhile, Tooru just watched the scenery go by outside the window, taking him away from the friends he could trust back towards the teammates he didn't have such an established bond with.

"Oikawa," Wakatoshi said suddenly, when they were about to cross Miyagi's border. "I want to apologize."

Tooru tore his gaze from rice paddies to stare at Wakatoshi in disgusted disbelief. "Who cares? It's too late for that, Ushiwaka-chan. There is literally no way you could apologize to me that would matter."

Wakatoshi nodded, which surprised Tooru, who had expected him to try to apologize again with more force, like he could "win" at this apology if he did it with enough power, like it was a game of volleyball. "I understand."

"I doubt you do," Tooru muttered. "But whatever." He started to turn to look out the window again, but Wakatoshi apparently wasn't done interrupting Tooru's thoughts.

"If an apology is no good, what do you want, Oikawa? I will do whatever is in my power to make it so."

Tooru narrowed his eyes, scrutinizing Wakatoshi anew. It was typically boring and futile to try to figure out what he was thinking under his stoic surface, and Tooru generally didn't care enough to try. But he realized that there was something different about him then. Maybe it was the way his eyes were glued to the road, though they were still in a low-traffic area not requiring such prudence. Or maybe it was the way Wakatoshi's jaw was set, the way it got when he was up against blockers used to a leftie and was getting shut-out more than usual.

If Tooru wasn't horribly mistaken, he thought Wakatoshi might've actually been nervous.

He settled back in his seat, arms crossed, as he thought that over. Wakatoshi had thought they were dating. Wakatoshi had been receptive to his advances from the very start. Wakatoshi was actually listening to him now and trying to make things right. Like he cared. Like he actually wanted Tooru to forgive him.

"Okay," he said. "I'll tell you what I want. First, no more ad libbing in interviews. If you want to say something about us, you clear it with me first. Second, don't ever try to hold my hand or kiss me or anything physical in public. Third, don't say anything unnecessary to our teammates. You know some of them aren't going to like us anymore, don't you? Just ignore them instead of doing anything that will make things worse."

When he was finished laying out his terms, he looked away again, down at his hands. It was a trick he'd learned long ago to keep them steady and let that steadiness spread through the rest of his body when things were tense.

"Oikawa," Wakatoshi said. When Tooru gave a half-hum to show he was half-listening, he went on. "Do you not want me to tell them the truth?"

Tooru snorted. "Oh? So you realized we really aren't dating and everything you said in that interview was a trick of your own ego?"

"That is what you said."

"Obviously that's the truth, but I want you to keep your mouth shut about that, too. Everyone knows we're gay now, but I'm not going to let them think I'm a slutty gay."

Wakatoshi didn't say anything for a while, and Tooru let himself hope that was the end of the discussion and he'd go along with the plan Tooru had laid out. But of course Wakatoshi couldn't make it all the way back without saying something else infuriating.

He began, "Oikawa, your family-"

Tooru reached for the radio dial and turned some J-pop program on full blast, letting that be Wakatoshi's cue to shut up.

-

Wakatoshi knew it could've been much worse, but he wasn't pleased with how the conversation had gone. He was willing to try to play along for Tooru's sake, but if their relationship had been nothing but a ruse all along, it felt farcical to continue it now. He felt like he'd been told he was an actor in a play all along, and now that he'd seen his character description, he wanted to refuse the role, but it was too late.

How did Tooru do it, he wondered. Always pretending to be something he wasn't and encouraging the people around him to believe in lies. It seemed like an unnecessarily difficult way to live.

He looked over at him again. He was staring out the window moodily, though he'd turned the radio on to the most upbeat station imaginable. Wakatoshi placed a hand on his thigh, feeling him instantly stiffen. "We are almost back at the university."

Tooru knocked his hand away. "I told you not to touch me, didn't I?"

Wakatoshi put his hand back on the steering wheel, frowning. "You told me not to touch you in public."

"Yes, because I thought it was already obvious I didn't want you touching me in private anymore," Tooru said, that frequent exasperation back in his voice. "I know you traded your brain for more muscle, but honestly, Ushiwaka, sometimes you're just too dense."

Wakatoshi didn't respond to Tooru's callousness. He didn't believe in wasting his energy like that.

As soon as he'd pulled into their dorm parking lot, Tooru straightened up, grabbed his bag, and got out of the car. By the time Wakatoshi had grabbed his own bag and locked the car doors behind him, Tooru was gone.

Wakatoshi went to his room, one of the dorms on the first floor of the building, and let himself in. His roommate was Itsuki, a libero. He didn't say much, at practice or elsewhere, and that combined with his small stature made it easy for him to fade into the background of any given situation. That was how he played volleyball, too. He slipped wherever he needed to be, sent the ball flying up, and then slipped back out of the action. Right then, he was sitting with his knees up on a chair in the corner, reading a textbook. He glanced up at Wakatoshi, nodded, and returned to reading. Whether Itsuki knew about the interview or not, Wakatoshi didn't think he cared.

He took his own chair, turn on his desk lamp, and pull out the book he'd been reading in the car while waiting for Tooru earlier. It was a book of famous plays from all over the world, translated into Japanese. Most of them were decades old, but he was in the middle of a contemporary one full of references to the preceding plays in the book, and he quickly lost himself in a rich world very unlike the quiet dorm room.

-

Wakatoshi had never had a particular favorite subject in school, or a least favorite, for that matter. He listened faithfully in each class, took proper notes, and passed comfortably. He never really thought about it until he met Satori when they entered middle school together. Satori was loud and bouncy and rattled off questions like he only had one minute to learn someone else's life story.

"Who's your homeroom teacher? Who's your favorite teacher? Isn't Inoue-sensei the worst? If he catches you reading manga in class, he confiscates it! I bet he just wants to read it without paying for it!" He prattled on and on and Wakatoshi listened, giving his own comments whenever Satori paused and looked at him expectantly.

"I hate chemistry!" he complained one day when they were cleaning up the loose volleyballs at the end of afternoon practice. "It should be all fun and explosive, right? So why do we have to do boring things like memorize the names of all the elements?"

The thing about Satori's questions was that they were often rhetorical, or else he answered them himself. But he paused after asking, "What subject do _you_ hate?"

Wakatoshi thought over his schedule. "I don't hate any of them."

Satori had just tilted his head, like he was waiting for more, but when Wakatoshi didn't add on, he rocketed off to a new topic.

Ironically, it was during volleyball training camp when a subject became his favorite for the first time.

It was his first training camp at Shiratorizawa's junior division, and it would be the only training camp he ever had with either Kitagawa Daiichi or Aoba Jousai. A couple of other schools in the prefecture joined in, but Wakatoshi didn't remember them now. He just remembered Kitagawa Daiichi and seeing Oikawa Tooru for the first time.

The first-years at powerhouse schools didn't get much opportunity to play during the day's practice matches. It was mostly about watching and learning and of course running errands to keep things running smoothly for the large team of upperclassmen. There were multiple gyms open to them for free practice in the evening, and a lot of the first-years from various schools found themselves congregating in one, glad for a chance to be the stars of the court for a while.

Wakatoshi remembered playing a three-on-three game with Satori and Eita on his side. On the other side of the court, a tall setter with wavy hair and a calculating smile impressed him with his ability to make his teammates seem far more capable than they really were. They crammed in as many sets as time allowed, and at some point Wakatoshi heard his name and memorized it. It wasn't often he met a player as naturally dazzling as he was.

Years later, he would wonder if Tooru remembered their first games together too, and that once he'd played Wakatoshi without sending him nasty glares every other serve.

Wakatoshi saw Tooru again during the training camp-wide lunch the next day. The weather was hot as they sat outside under the sun, but it was better than in the gym, where the humidity weighed even heavier. At least they had cold drinks, and Wakatoshi was heading to refill his cup when he got distracted by a small group of Kitagawa Daiichi players in a loose circle near the drink table.

The setter from the previous night was standing in the center of the circle, a book folded open in his hand. "I can't believe you brought homework to training camp, Nakamura!" he laughed.

The boy who was presumably Nakamura shrugged. "I figured I could get some reading in before bed." He didn't seem that upset when his teammates elbowed him and called him a nerd for that.

Wakatoshi's eyes remained trained on Tooru, as he glanced back down at the book and began acting out a scene. He realized he recognized it from a play he'd read at the beginning of the school year. It hadn't made much of an impression on his memory, but what he did remember seemed totally different than the vivid show Tooru was putting on. He kept changing his voice and his posture as he went through the scene playing each character's part, encouraged by the laughs and claps of his teammates.

"Wakatoshi-kun, over here!" Satori appeared suddenly, tugging on his arm and pulling him towards a watermelon seed spitting contest. He let Satori lead him away, but he looked over his shoulder once more, the image of grinning, charismatic Oikawa Tooru burning itself into his memory.

Plays seemed more interesting after that day. If one seemed dull and flat, he just imagined Tooru acting out the characters, giving them life, and it became entertaining right away.

He bet Tooru would say that was stupid if he ever said it aloud, though, and when he was able to answer Satori's question about his favorite subject the next time it came up, he never gave a reason why it was literature.

-

Tooru barely slept that night. He was dreading practice and miserable for realizing that volleyball wasn't going to be his refuge this time. Of course, it wasn't the sport itself that was the problem. He just didn't want to deal with his teammates' reactions. His roommate Yuta hadn't come home the previous evening, and Tooru couldn't imagine that was a coincidence.

_I don't have a disease_ , he'd thought, kicking Yuta's bed therapeutically. _I'm not contagious._

He rose long before his alarm clock and took his time cultivating the appearance he wanted. Styled but not purposefully so. Relaxed but not sloppy. There wasn't anything he could do about his undereye circles, but he practiced a disarming grin in the mirror until he mustered up one that was half-convincing.

When he was about to head out the door, he got a text.

_Ushibaka: Would you like to walk to practice together?_

Tooru's thumbs hesitated over the keyboard for a moment.

_Me: i'm leaving right now_

It wasn't a yes or a no, but a fact. After he left, Wakatoshi caught up with him right away.

"Good morning, Oikawa."

"Yeah, yeah."

Tooru took a deep breath as they approached the gym doors and let an easy smile fall into place. He just had to show them he wasn't a different person than back when they thought he was straight. He held his head high and walked into practice, unable to miss how every head in the room turned their way instantly. Conversations hushed; balls were caught and held instead of hit back.

Tooru acted like nothing was amiss. He started warming up, saying good morning to the teammates nearest him, who said it back out of reflex if nothing else.

No one mentioned the interview. No one probably knew how to, with him and Wakatoshi acting like nothing was out of the ordinary. Tooru felt the pressure of a dozen stares at any given moment, but then the coaches showed up, and drills began as usual.

In the end, it wasn't him that flipped out from the pressure.

He was in the middle of a mock game, the starters against the second-string where he had the honor of playing setter, and after scanning the court, he sent the ball flying towards his roommate, who'd shown up right as the coaches had and had steadfastly avoided Tooru's eyes until that point.

"Yuta-chan!" he called out, and it turned out to be the one thing he shouldn't have done as normal.

Yuta had started to jump, but he froze midair and landed again without attempting to swing. His head swung around, his eyes bright with anger as he said, "Don't call me that, you fag!"

The court fell silent and the volleyball bounced uselessly aside. Tooru had never hated being the center of attention so much as in that moment, and he was relieved when Wakatoshi stepped forward, drawing some of the eyes from Tooru to himself. But he didn't say anything, and Tooru didn't know why he'd expected him too. He wasn't Hajime, who would've punched Yuta in the face already.

The shrill blast of a whistle finally saved him, and the head coach barked out, "That's enough for today. Oikawa, Ushijima, hit the showers."

Tooru felt a pang at being singled out, but coaches weren't to be argued with, and he wouldn't be doing himself any favors by protesting. He felt like the gym was spinning around him as he made his way off the court and through the doors that led to the locker room.

As soon as he and Wakatoshi were through them, he turned back around and put his ear to the crack.

"Oikawa-"

" _Shh_ ," Oikawa hissed. "I'm trying to listen."

The coach wasn't speaking loudly, and Tooru could only catch snatches of what he was saying.

"...that kind of language... teammates, got it? ...here to win..."

Then Yuta's upset voice, much louder than the coach's. "But Coach, they-!"

The coach became louder too, cutting him off. " _Enough_ , Sonoda. Keep it off the court."

The impromptu meeting seemed to end then, and the typical sounds of a gym being cleaned took over. Tooru stepped back from the door, not knowing if whatever conversation had just happened was good or bad.

But he did know he felt sick to have been called something like that in a tone of simple hate.

He crouched down, thinking he might actually be sick. Wakatoshi crouched down next to him, and Tooru could see him start to move a hand toward him, then pause and pull it back to himeslf. Good. He remembered the rules. Tooru almost laughed, thinking of how pointless it all seemed.

"The coach won't penalize us, Oikawa," Wakatoshi said. "We'll play well and earn our spots."

He said it so calmly and confidently that it was almost nice to hear, but Tooru wasn't going to believe that until it happened.

"Ushiwaka." His voice surprised him, coming out as calm as Wakatoshi's.

"What?"

Tooru raised his head to glare at him, feeling sick all over again. "I'm never going to forgive you for this."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm telling you guys, middle school-era UshiOi is underrated.
> 
> Update speed of this fic will probably depend on the response, so if you want to read more, please leave a kudos and a comment to let me know! This fic has some similar themes but a very different tone than my last multi-chapter fic, so I'm curious to know what you guys think.


	4. Chapter Three

When Tooru and Hajime chose different colleges, Tooru was both relieved and devastated.

It was difficult and sometimes agonizingly lonely to be away from his best friend, someone he was used to seeing every day. He wanted to talk to him first about everything that happened to him, but he couldn't anymore. Whether it was complaining about having Wakatoshi as a teammate or laughing about something funny that had happened during class, Hajime wasn't right there by his side to talk about it with anymore. Texting wasn't the same at all, especially when their busy schedules made messages more infrequent than probably either of them liked.

Tooru was insanely jealous of Hajime's roommate, the lucky guy who probably didn't even know how lucky he was. His own roommate was okay, but not someone he could really be comfortable around, and that meant always keeping up a front even when he was in his own room.

But there were a couple of good things about the distance, he had to admit. He didn't have to worry about if he was being too touchy-feely with Hajime, or if someone was going to look at them and figure his feelings out. He thought that maybe, possibly, by some miracle, he'd stop being in love with Hajime when they weren't together all the time.

Then he acted like an idiot and let himself get drunk the first time Hajime was in his proximity in weeks.

It was at a party, his first college party, and not even at his own college. His team had played a series of practice games at Hajime's school, and Tooru had stuck around afterwards at Hajime's invitation. They ended up going with some of the upperclassmen on Hajime's team to a party that was surprisingly close to what movies always depicted, with painfully loud music, cups with sketchy contents, and plenty of underage drinking.

Tooru wasn't an angel above drinking at age eighteen, but it wasn't something he typically did, since alcohol wasn't exactly beneficial for athletes. But he'd been in a good mood and alcohol was everywhere and the party was fun and one drink turned into two or three. He was smart enough to keep an eye on his drink, but apparently not smart enough to know when he was past his limit.

When he was drunk, he felt good. Better than usual. Everything was light and airy and free, and he laughed and talked with pretty girls who thought he was into them and pretty guys he was too in love with Hajime to really notice. Different music genres from different speakers in different rooms created a tornado of sound, and then he was putting his arm around Hajime's waist, laughing again and leaning in closely, laying his head against Hajime's briefly before letting his hand drop down to the top of his jeans, fingers exploring and finding bare skin.

Hajime smacked his hand away with a roll of his eyes. "Get a hold of yourself, Drunkkawa," he said, looking a little buzzed himself, though he hadn't indulged nearly as much as Tooru had.

"I'd rather get a hold of you," Tooru replied with a sharp grin. He slipped his arm around Hajime again, pulling him in closer-

Until steady hands shoved at his chest, pushing him back. Tooru blinked, trying to focus on Hajime's face. "What the hell are you playing at?" Hajime scowled.

Tooru blinked again, feeling suddenly like he'd swallowed lead. "I'm not playing at anything."

Hajime looked pissed, but then as he made eye contact with Tooru, he seemed to understand something. His mouth opened, he paused, and then: "Oh."

It was one word. One syllable.

And the one rejection Tooru knew he wouldn't be able to live with.

-

Tooru didn't want to become a hermit, but he figured his room was going to be his only sanctuary for a while. After all, the chances of Yuta willingly inhabiting the same space as him were nonexistent, and he'd have to take advantage of that.

But as he learned minutes into his imposed solitude, Yuta's disgust of him ran even deeper than expected. He saw the door opening out of the corner of his eye and lowered his headphones to rest around his neck, surprised to see Yuta rushing in.

No words were exchanged as Yuta started piling his things in the middle of the room, tugging his clothes off his hangers with enough force to break a couple of them, going in and out of the bathroom to empty it of all his toiletries.

Tooru got the message soon enough, but he didn't say anything even then. If Yuta was going to find somewhere else to stay, that was actually better. He was about to put his headphones back on and ignore Yuta's bustling rage when Yuta finally looked at him.

He spat, "You acted like you hated him, you're such a liar."

Tooru narrowed his eyes. "What does it matter to you, anyway? If you're moving out, go. Though I don't know how you expect to avoid me altogether without quitting the team."

"Don't flatter yourself so much," Yuta said. "You're no genius. I'll become a starter first, and I won't have to look at you when you're warming the bench."

The red heat of anger diminished all Tooru's other emotions. If Yuta wanted to fight with words, he chose the wrong opponent. "Is that so?" he asked, voice as cold as his anger was hot. "I suppose if all the other middle blockers die in a freak accident, then you might be able to play a few games before they recruit some new high schoolers who actually know how to play decoy."

Yuta hurled the bottle of shampoo that was still in his hand across the room, where it burst open and splattered blue goo over the wall. "Shut _up_! You're from a high school that hasn't made it to nationals in a decade! What makes you get to talk all high and mighty?"

The loud sound of the bottle crashing against the wall had stunned Tooru for a second, making him realize this could quickly deteriorate into a blow of fists, not just words, and then the coach really would have a reason to suspend him. He didn't want to and it wasn't fair, but he forced himself not to lash back and incite Yuta further. He turned his head and simply said, "That aside, you know Ushijima will be playing starter before the year ends. So you better stop caring so much about being on the court with one of-"

"Oh, come off it," Yuta scoffed, to Tooru's confusion. Surely Yuta wasn't delusional enough in his prejudice to think Wakatoshi wasn't a beast on the court. But he understood when Yuta went on. "Everyone knows you're the one who started it. He was probably normal before you came along."

Tooru started. "What?" It was such an absurd accusation he couldn't even refute it right away. Wakatoshi was the one who'd made the huge announcement to the world, yet Yuta thought _Tooru_ was the instigator?

"You heard me," Yuta said, growing bolder when he saw Tooru didn't have a retort for once. "You're the girl in the relationship, right? I mean, it's obvious."

Tooru stared at Yuta silently, his anger burning its hottest yet, but he didn't let it escape, not in a flurry of words or fists, at least. He walked over to Yuta's pile of stuff, Yuta eyeing him warily like he was ready for a fight, picked up the biggest bag, and threw it out the door.

"If you're going to go, go," he said, pointing outside and then turning his back. He put his headphones on and sat down in front of his computer again, and he didn't look back up until he heard the door slam shut.

When Yuta was finally gone, Tooru closed his eyes and tried to regulate his breathing. Yuta was an asshole, that much he'd learned. But there was something worryingly possible about his words, casting things in a new light Tooru didn't like at all.

-

That night at the party, Tooru hadn't even known Wakatoshi was there too. When he was stumbling away from Hajime, feeling like he was going to throw up with every step, a hand on his shoulder caught him when he was about to lose his balance. He'd expected Hajime there to make the situation worse in an attempt to make it better, but it was Wakatoshi's voice he heard. "Oikawa, you drank too much."

Tooru's head spun as he whipped it around, trying to glare at him without losing hold of the tears that threatened to leak out. "Who the fuck asked you?" Then he remembered something important: Wakatoshi had a car. He and some of the other players had driven, expecting to stay at the university longer than the practice games required. "Give me your keys," he demanded, too drunk to stop himself from reaching into Wakatoshi's pockets in pursuit of them.

Wakatoshi calmly took his wrist and shook his head. "You can't drive. Not only are you drunk, you don't have a license."

"Shut up. I need to-" A wave of nausea cut him off. He wanted out of there, away from the blaring music and reek of alcohol, away from Hajime.

Wakatoshi put his own hand in his pocket and Tooru became hopeful when he heard the sound of keys jingling. "I'll drive you back."

The hope instantly vanished. "No. Just-"

"Follow me."

He didn't have much of a choice after that, because Wakatoshi was firmly leading him out of the party, and his muscles and willpower felt all shriveled up from intoxication. It might have been a relief, too, to find himself with more and more distance from wherever Hajime was and from the scene he kept reliving in his mind.

When his head stopped spinning somewhat, he realized he was already in the car with Wakatoshi, and they were already on the road. This awareness came with even more nausea, the movement of the car and the uncontrollable blur of scenery outside like a direct impact to his stomach. He pressed his hands over his mouth and doubled over.

Apparently, Wakatoshi stopped the car, because the next thing Tooru knew, the passenger side door was opening and Wakatoshi was helping him out. They were parked on the side of a long stretch of road, some route back to their university that didn't cross through populated stretches. Weeds and unkempt patches of grass lined both sides of the highway, and Tooru stumbled towards them and let himself be sick. When his stomach was empty and he could actually move without being overcome with dizziness, he got back into the car himself and leaned his head against the window, entirely spent.

What he didn't know was that getting rid of the alcohol in his stomach didn't affect the alcohol already at home in his veins, and now that he wasn't too sick to open his mouth without puking, he was feeling that same lack of control that had gotten him into this whole mess, only instead of it making him bold with his hands, it made him reckless with his words.

Later, he would not remember just how much he told Wakatoshi, but he knew he told him far more than necessary. About Hajime rejecting him, about how he thought that they'd had a chance, that Hajime was being receptive to him all these years, that the feelings were mutual and they just hadn't said them aloud yet. It had all been his optimistic delusion, and now he had to deal with reality.

-

Tooru stretched out on the floor of his dorm room, staring up at the ceiling as he thought. Perhaps he had a knack for reading too much into people's feelings for him. It had led to one humiliating heartbreak in the past. Maybe he was being delusional again, and Wakatoshi wasn't even hopelessly smitten with him like he'd come to think. Why would he be, after seeing him at his lowest that night of the party? What if it was just his ego talking, in some twisted way, and he was just telling himself he didn't want Wakatoshi to like him? Did he like the idea of Wakatoshi liking him even though he didn't feel anything but animosity towards him in return? Was he so messed up that it was even a way for him to deal with having been in the same position once of liking someone who didn't feel the same way?

_"Everyone knows you're the one who started it, he was probably normal before you came along."_

Tooru _had_ started it. He'd teased Wakatoshi about sex first. He'd called him quite a few times when he wanted to get off and going solo wasn't doing it. And eventually, Wakatoshi had taken it to mean there was some sort of relationship between them, but that didn't necessarily mean he'd asked for there to be, only that he'd let Tooru lead the way.

Tooru was disgusted with himself for even being upset at the notion that Wakatoshi might not care that much about him. But it seemed worse somehow for that to be true, since it was Wakatoshi who'd put him in this position of vulnerable transparency with the world.

There was a knock at the door and Tooru flinched. He doubted he'd be happy to see whoever it was, and his suspicions proved true when he looked through the peephole and saw the subject of all his current troubles standing innocuously outside, a large basket in his hands. Tooru sighed and let his forehead rest against the door for a moment before opening it.

"What do you want, Ushiwaka?" he asked, sounding far more tired than belligerent.

Wakatoshi moved past him without waiting for an invitation, setting the basket down near the wardrobe Yuta had recently vacated. "Apparently our roommates were switched."

"Are you serious?" Tooru asked, though it was the most unnecessary question one could ever ask Wakatoshi, who was now unpacking his belongings as though he'd been given a warm welcome to do just that. With his back turned to Tooru and his demeanor as silent as ever, Tooru couldn't help but become more worried about Yuta's words than before. Wakatoshi was so quiet and non-expressive. That was exactly the type of person other people would fill in the blanks for, seeing what they wanted to see.

"I'm going for a run," Tooru said abruptly, no longer seeing the dorm room as a potential haven, and escaping it without even taking the time to grab a jacket.

-

Wakatoshi sat in front of his new desk in his new room and started up his laptop. He should've been happy that he'd been moved in with Tooru, but happy didn't come close to describing how he felt, and how he'd felt since seeing their teammates turn on them – on Tooru. His fists tightened in anger as he remembered the look of shock on Tooru's face when Yuta had called him something so cruel and distasteful.

He couldn't remember ever wanting to strike a teammate before that moment. No, he couldn't remember ever wanting to strike _anyone_ at all before.

And now Tooru was clearly trying to avoid him and probably would give him the silent treatment, making it feel like they weren't sharing the same living space for who knew how long. Wakatoshi had patiently suffered through a number of Tooru's mood swings, ones that seemed to only occur around him, but he felt this one might last longer than his patience.

And this time, it was justified.

He checked to see who was online. Satori was, as usual, but no one else seemed to be. Wakatoshi was debating whether or not to call him when his computer starting playing a ringing sound and a message popped up to let him know he was receiving a call. He clicked on it, unsurprised at Satori's always eerie timing.

"Waka-kun," Satori sang out, "have you been keeping up with Jump? I met this otaku guy here and I thought we were gonna be friends but then he got mad at me for spoiling Nisekoi for him!"

He continued talking about his college and various shounen manga, intertwining it loosely so that it sounded like pirates were his classmates and he'd transferred somewhere called Hero Academy. Wakatoshi listened intently, though he barely understood any of his references. Satori had always tried to get him into manga, but what he didn't seem to realize was that his retellings were far more interesting than the manga themselves.

"And that's the Satori Special Update!" he finished abruptly. "So tell me about Oikawa."

Wakatoshi nodded, though he felt like a sharp stone was growing in his gut every time he thought about the worsening situation. "He is upset about the interview."

"Yeah, duh, but did you try to apologize? Guy's got a massive ego, can't be easy to appease him."

Wakatoshi frowned thoughtfully. It was true Tooru appeared arrogant, but that was only true in a superficial way. He was confident in the skills he'd honed, which was entirely reasonable. Everything else was swagger to intimidate and prevent anyone from seeing his insecurities. But that was difficult to explain, and probably Satori wasn't all that interested, so Wakatoshi just answered his question.

"I did. He says he isn't going to forgive me. We're roommates now."

"What kind of non-sequitir was that?" Satori sat up straight, elbowing a stack of magazines out of his way so he could rest his arms on the desk. "I hope he doesn't try to kill you in your sleep. You're a heavy sleeper, aren't you?"

"He could not kill me."

"You take everything too seriously! Except the very real threat of Oikawa smothering you with a pillow, apparently."

Between Satori's interjections, Wakatoshi told him the rest of the story, about Tooru's insistence that they pretend to be dating in public and about how their teammates had reacted poorly. Satori got a mean glint in his eyes when Wakatoshi talked about Yuta.

"I hope we have a game against your school soon. I want to break him," he said, raising a leg and kicking another magazine off his desk for emphasis.

Wakatoshi had never understood Satori's personal brand of intimidation, but now he felt like if anyone deserved it, it was Tooru's former roommate.

"Where is Oikawa, anyway?" Tendou asked, head tilted as though he'd be able to see Tooru hiding in the corner of his screen.

"He went for a run." Wakatoshi paused, then forced him to admit something further. "I don't know how to fix this."

"Oh? Oh oh? Are you asking me for advice?" Tendou looked positively gleeful at the notion and he sat up straight, posture almost normal for a moment before he started bouncing up and down in his chair.

"You have never been in a relationship," Wakatoshi said. "I do not see what advice you could give me."

Satori pouted at him, looking remarkably like Tooru for a moment. "I wouldn't exactly say you're in a relationship either!"

The truth was painful. Wakatoshi simply nodded.

Satori relented. "I _do_ have some advice, though, and you should take it."

Wakatoshi nodded again, waiting for Satori's wisdom and suspecting it might come from a shoujo manga.

"Find out something about Oikawa that has nothing to do with volleyball, like his birthday or movies he likes or something. Then he'll see that there's more to you than he realizes."

It was surprisingly sound advice, and simple enough that Wakatoshi felt a little ashamed that he hadn't thought of it himself. He looked around the room, noticing again the posters Tooru had up. "I think he likes aliens."

"Ooh, better taste than I expected. I'll send you some movie recommendations, but the rest is up to you," Satori said.

Once they were done speaking, Wakatoshi spent the rest of the afternoon until Tooru came back observing his personal affects and learning new things about him. Most importantly, he learned there was a lot to Tooru beyond what he'd seen thus far. If he could learn that about Tooru now, then surely Tooru could see the same was true about Wakatoshi.

He chose a movie from Satori's list of recommendations and waited, feeling more nervous than he ever had before a volleyball game.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the lovely comments! They pushed me to get this chapter out before the end of the year. It's definitely later than I planned for it to be, but I did National Novel Writing Month in November and I'm still working on finishing up that story (50k words was not enough), so I had to neglect fanfiction for a bit.
> 
> I got to show more of what happened between Tooru and Hajime in this chapter and bring back Miracle Boy Satori, so I hope everyone enjoyed it! Though I'm sure everyone hates Yuta as much as I do.


	5. Chapter Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a wonderful person drew some fanart for the prologue! you can see it here: http://runicfairy.tumblr.com/post/167221195802/nobodycaresabout-the-truth-comes-out-and-so
> 
> their new url is nobodycaresabt.tumblr.com, so check them out.

This roommate switch, Tooru decided, would be his cause of death. He might even take awful, bigoted Yuta over having to spend so many hours in a day with Wakatoshi.

Especially since Wakatoshi was acting so weird lately.

It started the day he moved in. Tooru got back from his impromptu run, which had gotten him sweaty enough to warrant another shower, and he'd been heading for the bathroom when Wakatoshi said, "Have you seen this movie?"

Tooru intended to ignore the random question, but he happened to see the title screen on Wakatoshi's laptop. It was less than a second before he recognized it. "Yeah, like ten times." Before Wakatoshi could ask anything else, he locked himself in the bathroom and let the shower spray drown out the world.

The next thing Tooru knew, Wakatoshi was tagging along with him to breakfast in the university cafeteria every single morning. It was hard to tell him to fuck off in public, so Tooru just acted like he wasn't there, until Wakatoshi went and insulted his usual breakfast.

"Pastries are not good to eat before morning practice. You need something besides sugar."

Tooru made eye contact and took an even bigger bite of the strawberry-filled and objectively unhealthy pastry that always caught his eye from a tempting shelf near the register.

When Wakatoshi took the seat across the table again the next day, he held out a plastic bag to Tooru.

Tooru pretended not to see the obvious gesture, turning his head and looking around the cafeteria for any sort of distraction from his dining partner. Some of their teammates were trickling in, but as expected, none of them had been eager to hang out with him outside of practice lately.

"Oikawa," Wakatoshi said, trying to get his attention back. "This is better for you."

Tooru rolled his eyes, not sure what Wakatoshi was talking about and not particularly caring, but knowing that he wasn't going to drop whatever it was until Tooru at least looked. So he took the bag and peered inside. He pulled out something that didn't look so different from what he'd bought again that morning.

"It's made with whole-wheat and no added sugar," Wakatoshi explained.

"Okay, since when were you in charge of my diet?" He took a bite despite his complaint and tried not to show on his face how good it tasted.

"I am not," Wakatoshi said. "But if you insist on a pastry for breakfast, this one will provide better nutrition."

"Right." Tooru ate it to the last crumb in the end, and didn't complain when Wakatoshi brought more in the days that followed, sometimes with the same kind of filling, sometimes with a new flavor. It was free food and it tasted good, so he shrugged and left it at that.

But other things were harder to ignore. Like how Wakatoshi started leaving for morning jogs thirty minutes later, to coincide with when Tooru was ready. Or how, the very moment Tooru realized he'd forgotten something at practice or back in the dorm, Wakatoshi would hand it to him. Probably the most unpleasant thing had been coming back one evening to find a hot bath ready and waiting for him.

It was getting to be a little much, so one morning Tooru skipped his usual jog in favor of going by himself after classes and before practice started. Running was maybe the only time Tooru let his brain switch off, so while it was physically tiring, he found it mentally refreshing. At least, unless he was with Wakatoshi.

Or unless someone else tried to interfere.

"There you are, Oikawa!" a voice sang out.

Tooru stopped so suddenly he almost skidded on his heels, and someone caught up to him from behind. That flash of red hair and cartoonishly amused face would've been impossible to forget, even if the person they belonged to hadn't been on the team that gave Tooru hell from middle school all the way to high school graduation.

"I didn't know you went to a college near here, Tendou-chan," Tooru said.

"I don't." He grinned and Tooru considered running again, just to get away from him and whatever scheme this was.

"If you want to see Ushiwaka, you know where he's at, don't you?"

"Yeah, but I came to talk to you."

That was the last thing Tooru needed. "Sorry, busy," he said, and started jogging again. But just as he'd been an annoyingly tenacious blocker, Satori wasn't going to let himself be so easily evaded.

"Trouble in paradise, hm?" he asked, keeping up with Tooru's pace.

Tooru glared at him from the corner of his eye. Satori wasn't someone he had to keep a mask on in front of, but he wasn't someone he wanted to speak his true feelings to, either. "Really none of your business."

Satori shook his finger at Tooru. "It is my business, though. Wakatoshi-kun is my best friend."

"Can't imagine why."

"Says the guy who fucks him."

Tooru's face reddened and he stopped again. "What the hell do you want from me?"

Satori stopped next to him and held up two hands in what was probably supposed to be an appeasing manner. "Now, now, I didn't come to fight~"

Tooru didn't say anything this time. There was no point, when Satori would come back with something far more twisted or crude than anything he could come up with.

Satori sighed and laced his fingers behind his head, looking up at the sky as he spoke. "What a touchy guy~ Oh, well. I kind of expected all this to happen when you two ended up at the same university on the same team."

Tooru raised an eyebrow. "I really doubt your intuition is that good."

Satori laughed. "You've got no idea, Oikawa-kun. I wasn't the only one who was worried, either. But to think that now that something has happened, you're being so ice-cold to poor Wakatoshi."

Tooru's skepticism turned to disgust. "You know he outed me without my permission, right? He made up this fantasy about us dating and shared it with the whole world."

Satori gave him a longsuffering look, which was even worse than his usual creepy faces. "You gotta think about it from his perspective. The guy you've been lowkey in love with for six years starts banging you, of course you're gonna jump to the conclusions you wanna jump to."

Tooru had been about to set off jogging in another probably fruitless attempt to get away from Satori, but that made him pause. "What do you mean, six years?"

"I mean, we're all in the club room at Shiratorizawa as middle-school first-years, right, talking about girls, and someone asks Wakatoshi who he thinks is pretty, and picture this- he gives us the most sincere look and says your name."

The image of it went through Tooru's mind against his will and he turned away from Satori, not sure what kind of expression he was making. Satori was messing with him. He had to be. Six years? Since _middle school?_

After a few moments, he turned back to Satori and shook his head. "There's no way that's true. He didn't give any indication-"

"Which was hard work on our parts!" Satori interrupted. "You don't know what it's been like. We had to spend all of middle and high school fielding him and making sure he didn't say the wrong thing to the wrong person. But we did it! And you couldn't keep his foot out of his mouth for six months."

He tried to pin down a motive for Satori to lie about this, but he couldn't. He couldn't accept something so preposterous, either, so he focused instead on Satori's accusation. "So what, this is my fault?"

"You can blame him, but you might as well blame the sun for being bright."

Tooru couldn't stand still any longer. He knew from taking this route before that there was a convenience store around the next corner, where the path rejoined the main street. He headed there, aware that Satori was still following him, even though it had become more of a run than a jog. Inside the convenience store, he was blasted with air conditioner, like the workers were letting it go all out one last time before shutting it off for the winter. It felt nice and numbing on his sweaty skin, and he took his time picking out a drink before he went back outside. Satori was leaning against some stranger's motorbike, waiting.

Tooru didn't want him to say anything more there, right in front of the convenience store, so he let Satori corner him around the side of the building, where the air smelled faintly of nicotine. He took a long drink and said, "Was there a point to tracking me down like this?"

"Obviously!" Satori said. "You just keep running off before I get to it."

"Then hurry up."

"I get that you've got emotional scars from Shiratorizawa," Satori said, so nonchalantly Tooru saw red. "But Wakatoshi isn't your enemy anymore. In fact, he's the best ally you could have in your situation."

"The situation he put me in," Tooru reminded him.

Satori grinned. "Nope, I know you started this. I got all the juicy details from Wakatoshi."

Tooru groaned and looked away. It wasn't like he wanted anyone to know about his sex life, but Satori was just about the worst possible person to know. He just hoped Wakatoshi's details had been more lacking than, as Satori put it, juicy. "You better keep your mouth shut about whatever you actually do know."

"Hey, I'm not here to sabotage either you or Wakatoshi, and believe me, he would be so super pissed at me if I blabbed!"

"Which would make him a hypocrite."

Satori stared at him in unnerving silence, long enough for Tooru to finish his drink and start looking around for a recycling bin. His search was cut off when Satori said, "You really don't get it, but Wakatoshi likes you. A lot. I thought you knew that and were just taking advantage of it, but I guess you're dumber off the court."

Tooru opened his mouth to retort, but a flood of the previous weeks' memories made him pause. Wakatoshi trying to recommend movies to him. Wakatoshi buying him breakfast. Wakatoshi making every effort to spend more time with him, when they were already roommates and teammates and saw each other more hours in a day than not.

He spotted the recycling bin and threw his drink away. Without looking back at Satori, he said, "I think you've made whatever point you were trying to make."

He never knew what to expect from Satori. That was why he was such a pain to have as as opponent. But it turned out he didn't need to be braced for whatever else nonsense he might say, because Satori just chirped, "Don't forget any of what I said!" and then Tooru heard him leave.

He heaved out a sigh and went back to jogging, telling himself not to be paranoid. What were the chances that another ex-Shiratorizawa jerk was going to track him down? Nonetheless, he couldn't turn his mind off and enjoy the feel of feet on pavement or the gusts of wind that cooled him down.

But though he'd lost the motivation to run, he didn't want to go back to campus, either. A lot of the students still had no idea how to act towards him, and going from social butterfly to tentative outcast was not something he knew how to handle. And if he went back to his room, Wakatoshi would be there.

Wakatoshi, who, according to Satori, liked him so very much.

Tooru practically snarled. Liking someone didn't mean spilling their secrets to the world. It didn't mean always looking at them impassively and belittling their emotions. Wakatoshi didn't like him. He liked Tooru's volleyball skills, sure, and maybe his body. But that hardly qualified as _liking_.

Liking was always looking out for someone, whether they asked you to or not. Liking was keeping someone from ruining themself all alone. Liking was being just one phone call away. Liking was being in perfect sync and knowing it.

Liking was in everything Hajime had done for him and nothing Wakatoshi had, and Tooru could not understand this world where it wasn't the former who wanted to be with him.

He left the sidewalk and stumbled into one of a thousand Shinto shrines around. Trees provided some kind of natural barrier from the city's sights if not its sounds and the stone benches near the edge, away from the altar, gave him a place to sit and try to calm down. He had his phone in his hand, but he wouldn't let himself call the person he wanted to. If he did, he'd say something he regretted, like he always did when he tried to talk to Hajime at times like this.

Hajime was right. Tooru couldn't punish him for not loving him back. Tooru knew better than anyone that you don't get to pick who you like, no matter how hard you try. And he had tried so hard-

_"I just, why can't he feel the same? I tried not to love him, can't he try to love me?"_

Tooru froze, a buried memory resurfacing. That time after the party, when he'd drunkenly babbled his miseries to Wakatoshi. The memory was foggy now, but it was tugging at him, coaxing him to remember, when before he'd done his best to shut out everything about that night.

_"You cannot force your wishes to become reality, Oikawa."_

_Tooru turned his head to glare at Wakatoshi, and as he did, it was like he was seeing him for the first time. "Shit. Great. I just came out to my teammate. Enemy. Team-enemy."_

Tooru could not remember what expression Wakatoshi had been making, but he could remember what he'd said next.

_"There's nothing wrong with being attracted to men, Oikawa."_

Tooru stared up at a lantern made of the same stone as the bench he was sitting on. Cobwebs clung to its inner corners, but another gust of wind tore them away. If only it was that easy for memories to be wrenched from his brain.

To think Wakatoshi had been the first person to tell him it was okay to like guys.

"Well, he was biased, so," Tooru muttered to himself as he got to his feet to finish his jog.

-

The weather got colder, and so did Tooru. Wakatoshi was frustrated, because he'd done all the things Satori had suggested, but none of them made Tooru any closer to him. He'd even gone online to read some articles about dating and communication, but considering the uniqueness of his and Tooru's situation, they weren't helpful.

There was one thing he read that stuck with him, though he didn't quite understand it. Apparently, holidays were romantic, and Christmas especially was for couples. But they had volleyball practice on Christmas, and that didn't count as a date.

But after that came the New Year holidays and several weeks off school. When it came time to pack up and go home, Wakatoshi made his invitation to Tooru.

"Oikawa, would you like to spend New Years with-"

"Iwa-chan? I sure would, and he already invited me." Tooru answered without looking away from his computer, which was how he usually talked to Wakatoshi. His voice was bright and airy, which meant he was upset about something, and even Wakatoshi could understand what it had to be this time. Tooru had been vague about it, but he knew something had gone wrong between Tooru and his parents when they found out he was gay. That was why Wakatoshi wanted to take responsibility and give him somewhere to go, but as long as Tooru had a place in mind, he was fine with it.

Or he should've been fine with it, but the way Tooru clung to Hajime was painful to watch, for more than one reason.

Wakatoshi crossed the room and looked at the screen of Tooru's laptop. He was watching some Korean drama, something he did when stressed. Wakatoshi was learning a lot living with him, but it didn't seem to be reciprocal.

He pressed the mute key on Tooru's keyboard. "If you insist on keeping up the public image that we're a couple, it makes little sense to spend the holidays with another man and his family."

Tooru twisted around in his seat with his laptop and unmuted it, not even bothering to give Wakatoshi his signature dirty look.

There was no way to force Tooru to see sense, so Wakatoshi simply finished packing his things into his car and set off.

He was about an hour down the road when his phone rang. He found a spot to pull off and checked the number. It was unknown, and while he was thinking of calling back to see who it'd been, his phone began ringing and flashing the same number on the screen.

He accepted the call. "Hello."

There was a beat of silence, and then a gruff voice he didn't think he recognized. "Ushiwaka, right?"

"Who is this?"

"Iwaizumi. You know... From Seijou." Though his voice remained gruff, an awkward, almost embarrassed element tinged it. Wakatoshi had absolutely not expected Hajime to get his number and call him for any reason, and there was something irritating about his introduction, though Wakatoshi couldn't explain why. From Seijou, he'd said. Their connection was more than that now, though they hadn't spoken to each other even once since high school, and possibly hadn't then, either.

Truth be told, Wakatoshi hadn't thought much of Hajime through all the times they'd met on the court. He was just another person Tooru elevated, someone who couldn't compete without such a skilled setter. Then, the night Tooru had gotten himself drunk, he'd confessed to feelings for Hajime that surprised Wakatoshi. He hadn't been jealous, because it wasn't like he'd ever actively pursued Tooru. He'd been drawn to Tooru since middle school, but had never acted on his feelings until Tooru started flirting with him. And once he thought they'd gotten together, he assumed Tooru had gotten over his silly crush on Hajime.

If that wasn't the case, it made the fact Tooru had slept with him so many times borderline infuriating.

"Do you have some business with me?" Wakatoshi asked.

There was another stretch of silence, which Wakatoshi patiently outwaited. When Hajime spoke again, it sounded like it was through gritted teeth. "Do you know where Oikawa's spending the holidays?"

Wakatoshi frowned. "With you, I was told."

"That fucking idiot, I knew he was lying when he said he had plans." Without another word, Hajime hung up.

So Tooru had lied to both of them. Wakatoshi looked back down the long stretch of road in the direction he'd driven from and wondered what Tooru was doing right then, miles and miles back and all alone, just as he'd orchestrated.

Wakatoshi made a quick call home, then turned his car around.

-

Tooru was singing along to too-loud music when Wakatoshi unlocked the door and stepped inside. When he saw Wakatoshi, he caught the ball he'd been tossing up and stared. "I thought you left."

"I am not leaving you here alone for the entire holiday." Even if it meant having to drive a few extra hours. Wakatoshi didn't know a lot about what boyfriends were supposed to do, and he didn't really care about some unspoken set of rules surrounding dating in the first place. What he did know was that on a personal level, the idea of Tooru greeting the new year alone was unacceptable.

"I told you, Iwa-chan-"

"He called me to ask if you had any plans. You can stop lying." Wakatoshi felt a little tired saying that. If for once, Tooru could just be straightforward, then it wouldn't feel like every conversation they had was an old argument rehashed.

Tooru looked shocked, and then betrayed. "Fine, I'm not going to Iwa-chan's. But I'm not going with you, either. Why would I want to spend the holidays with your smelly family?"

It was the same level of insult a five-year-old might give, so Wakatoshi easily ignored it. "You can come with me, or I will stay here with you. Your choice."

"That's not a choice, that's an ultimatum, and you know I can pick neither and just go somewhere else after all, right?"

"Your third choice is to go with Iwaizumi after all." Wakatoshi didn't know what Hajime was planning on doing next, but he doubted it would be nothing. 

Tooru put the ball down and grabbed his phone from his desk, cringing when he looked at the screen. Wakatoshi guessed he had a lot of missed calls and messages that he'd been ignoring, not realizing they were from his angry best friend.

"Stupid Iwa-chan," he muttered and tossed the phone aside. "Fine, if you're that desperate for my company, I guess I have no choice."

"Then pack your things."

-

Tokyo's cramped roads turned into long stretches of emptiness as the landscape changed from vibrant to familiar. Tooru sat with his feet on the seat and his arms around his knees, watching out the window. It was never not awkward to be in a closed space with Wakatoshi, and Tooru had honestly been looking forward to a few weeks of freedom, but apparently that was too much to ask for. But the last thing Tooru wanted was to impose on Hajime's family and have them pity him all over again.

At least Wakatoshi never pitied him.

When the long car ride got boring, Tooru started looking through the dashboard and the compartment between the driver and passenger seats. It was mostly papers, official registration stuff, but he did find a book of poetry.

He made a half-interested humming sound and opened the book. It looked brand new, but that didn't mean much. Most of Wakatoshi's belongings did, no matter how much he used them. Inside were some poems he recognized, famous haiku that every student read in school, but a lot more that he didn't. Reading for fun had never been his thing.

And poetry, of all things? He couldn't imagine Wakatoshi reading a metaphor, let alone understanding it. He flipped to the back to the longer poems and read a few random lines with a snicker. Poems always sounded like they were trying too hard, like the poet had thrown together the most dramatic-sounding phrases without caring what they meant or if they had any clear meaning at all.

"Listen to this. 'Bleached by sun, numbed by snow, I am a name and nothing more. Ripped by thorn, scorched by flame, the wind echoes your name until I'm nothing more.'" He said the lines with mocking solemnness, then laughed. "What a fancy way to say you're lonely."

Without taking his eyes off the road, Wakatoshi said, "The context of the overall poem is more about identity than feelings of solitude. Both 'I' and 'you' in the poem are used interchangeably to refer to a single person."

Tooru closed the book and dropped it back where he'd found it. "I didn't ask, and anyway, I don't need you to explain that to me." If he'd read the whole poem, he was sure he would've known that. But of course Wakatoshi had turned his offhand comment into something to be superior about.

"I see."

The conversation ended there, and when Tooru was ready to die from boredom, they finally made it to Miyagi. The nostalgic roads passed by, and then the part of the city he hated because he associated it with Shiratorizawa, and then they were among rolling hills. Tooru hadn't exactly grown up in a super urban area, but he hadn't expected Wakatoshi to live this far in the middle of nowhere.

It made sense, though. Simple surroundings, simple guy.

Wakatoshi drove down a dirt lane and through an open gate with the nameplate "Ushijima" attached to it. For the first time, Tooru felt a little nervous. He didn't know anything about Wakatoshi's family, not how many people were in it, not if he had any siblings, not if they were all like him and would drive him insane in the space of a few days. Maybe he should've used the trip to ask Wakatoshi about those things, but then he would've seemed interested in Wakatoshi's life, which he decidedly wasn't.

But interested or not, one thing became apparent as soon as Tooru saw the sprawling estate inside the gates. Ushijima Wakatoshi was absolutely loaded.

As if Tooru needed another reason to hate him.

Suddenly Tooru felt like a kid again, visiting someone's house for the first time and not knowing any of the rules. He trailed behind Wakatoshi as they went in the front door. There was a generously-sized entrance area with a number of shoes lined up to one side. They took their own shoes off and Wakatoshi got two pairs of slippers for them.

"Is this a house or a ryokan?" Tooru muttered as he slid them on his feet.

"This is my family's home," Wakatoshi said, and Tooru sighed heavily. There was no way a guy this blunt and straightforward understood poetry, none at all. Someone must've explained that poem to him.

Then Wakatoshi called out in a louder voice, "I'm home." A few moments later, a middle-aged woman appeared in the hall. She had shoulder-length black hair and soft eyes, and since she didn't look surprised at seeing two people instead of one, Tooru figured Wakatoshi had already said he'd be bringing a guest. How much she knew of the relationship between Wakatoshi and his "guest" was unknown, though.

Regardless of what she knew or what she thought about what she knew, Tooru gave her a brilliant smile. It was the emotional opposite of what he'd been giving Wakatoshi's back a moment earlier, but years of practice made it easy to summon a smile when there was someone new to charm.

"Sorry for the intrusion! My name's Oikawa Tooru. It's nice to meet you." He inclined his head to her.

The woman smiled, which was already an improvement over the worst-case scenario of her being exactly like her robot son. "I'm Emiko, Wakatoshi's mother. It's nice to meet you, Tooru-kun. Formally, I should say- I remember your face from some of Wakatoshi's matches."

It definitely wasn't his current amicable expression that she should've remembered from them, but Tooru hurried the conversation past that point. "Is that so? Your home is lovely."

She motioned to the luggage slung over their shoulders. "Wakatoshi, why don't you show Tooru-kun to the guest room so he can put his things down before he gets a proper tour?"

Tooru perked up at the words "guest room." It should've been a given he'd get his own room. This was place was too nice not to have the space, and if Wakatoshi's mom did know about their relationship- and really, how could she not- then it'd be weird to have them share a room. But considering that was what Tooru had been doing for a couple of months, he was beyond relieved to know he'd get space to breathe again. No Yuto and no Wakatoshi, at least as long as the guest room door was closed between them.

Wakatoshi led him through a near-maze of halls, while Tooru tried to absorb as many details as he could along the way. The more he saw, the more he was convinced this really was some old-fashioned inn, not a place people lived. It was immaculate, every piece of furniture artfully arranged, and so very quiet.

Wakatoshi slid open a door and Tooru walked past him into the guest room. It had tatami flooring like most of the other rooms they'd passed, and a futon was folded up in the closet. Opposite the hallway, glass doors slid open onto a raised veranda.

"There are extra pillows and blankets in the top of the closet," Wakatoshi said. "If there's anything else you need, just ask."

"See, now you even sound like ryokan staff." Tooru put his bag down in the corner of the room. "What I don't need is a tour. At least, not until I unpack." He needed time to think about the mess he'd gotten himself into.

"I'll come back later," Wakatoshi said.

When he was gone and Tooru was finally alone, he let his shoulders sag. He was perfectly visible through the glass doors, but there was no one outside as far as he could see. He slid one of the doors open and took a seat on the veranda, looking out over a zen garden that made him feel like he was on a school trip to Kyoto.

A monk would sit and meditate, but Tooru's head wouldn't clear no matter how long he sat there, and he hadn't unpacked a single thing by the time Wakatoshi was knocking on the door to show him around.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, it sure has been a long time since I updated this... I posted a couple of one-shots since then, but mostly I've been focusing on my original fiction, and I've not yet figured out a good balance between that and fanfiction. I really love UshiOi, though, and I have a lot more ideas I want to use in this fic. Plus, I've gotten some really thoughtful comments during the months I've neglected updating, and they kept this story on my mind. I hope those of you following the story remember it and are excited to see it moving forward again!
> 
> Also, the more I write about literature fan Ushijima, the more I like the headcanon. 
> 
> A note about canon: I reread the Shiratorizawa vs. Karasuno chapters again recently and realized that Tendou didn't actually go to Shiratorizawa during middle school. Please overlook this small divergence from canon. ^_^:;
> 
> And one more note. Things are still very, very tense between Oikawa and Ushijima, and neither of them are exactly approaching each other in an ideal way. Their personalities are extremely in conflict. But I never want to rush the plot, so I hope you guys are enjoying the slow build.
> 
> Talk to me about all things haikyuu at runicfairy.tumblr.com~


	6. Chapter Five

In Wakatoshi's opinion, the grounds outside were the best part of his family's home, so after a cursory tour inside, he led Tooru out through the front door. It was noticeably quiet, especially compared to life in Tokyo. There were no cars clustering into traffic jams and no other families living nearby. The hills maintained a beautiful green even in winter and the air was fresh, like a newly born atmosphere.

It was also much colder than Tokyo had been, and Tooru was rubbing his arms as they walked. "I don't remember it being this cold in Miyagi." He pointed at the clear pond they were approaching. "Aren't your fish going to die?"

Wakatoshi stopped next to the koi pond. It in particular was a point of pride. There was an assortment of scale colors, from orange-gold to white and red patches to pure black. Some of the koi were older than he was, and he knew them by name.

At the moment, the koi were lazily swirling together near the bottom of the pond. "They're hibernating," Wakatoshi explained. "Until the water warms back up, they won't need to eat."

"Huh." Tooru dipped the toe of his shoe into the pond, circulating rings throughout the lucid water. "That's boring."

Wakatoshi glanced up from the fish to Tooru's neutral face. It was possible he was being contrary for the sake of being contrary, but Wakatoshi was reminded of his impatience when he was flipping through the book of poems. It was like Tooru never slowed down enough to appreciate something quiet and still. When he cared, few could match his intensity; when he didn't, the object- or person- in question was eschewed entirely.

Like when they met in hallways and Tooru's immediate reaction was to go the other way.

"Who else lives here?" Tooru asked, turning his back on the pond. "Don't tell me it's just you and your mom in all those rooms."

"My grandmother lives here as well."

Tooru side-eyed him. "What about your dad?"

"He lives overseas." Wakatoshi got emails and phone calls from him periodically, and the last he'd heard, his father had moved yet again. Those nomadic urges were a large part of why his parents' marriage hadn't worked out.

"So is it like a job thing or?"

Wakatoshi understood his meaning, because it was the thing people were always interested in when they heard about his family. "No, my parents are divorced."

"Oh." That was Tooru's whole comment on the matter. Usually, people fretfully apologized when they realized that was the case and looked abashed for even asking, which Wakatoshi didn't quite understand. Divorce was an obvious outcome when a couple wasn't right for each other, and he'd had most of his life to adjust to his parents' separation.

Then Tooru got a curious look, his first since Wakatoshi had started leading him around. "Wait, isn't it kind of awkward for your mom to live here with her in-laws?"

"My mother is an Ushijima by birth." That was the other thing about his family that surprised people. "My dad was adopted into the family."

"Oh, it's one of those situations." Tooru tilted his head. "Your family's kind of weird, huh. An absent father gone overseas sounds like the start of some drama."

"Tendou has mentioned that it sounds like a typical manga trope," Wakatoshi said, remembering.

A dark look crossed Tooru's face, and then it was gone. Wakatoshi didn't know what had triggered it, but with Tooru, it could've been anything.

"Anyway, can we go back inside now?" Tooru shuddered in another blast of cold wind. "It wouldn't be very hospitable of you if I died out here, you know."

"I did tell you to wear a warmer coat."

Tooru laughed, but it was dry and empty. "I'd ask if you were my mother, but I guess that wouldn't be a very funny joke."

Tooru moved past him back towards the house. There was more Wakatoshi had wanted to show him, like the dirt trails that wound through the hills that were perfect for building up endurance while jogging, but he supposed there would be plenty of time for that, and it was starting to get late. The drive had been long, especially since Wakatoshi had had to double back at one point, and the sun was sinking below the horizon.

When they were back inside, his mother Emiko called out from the kitchen in a cheerful voice. "Dinner's almost ready."

"Sounds wonderful," Tooru replied, with equal cheer.

The dining room was connected to the kitchen, and its decor was in keeping with the rest of the house's traditional look. The table was low, and chairs without legs were spaced evenly around it atop tatami flooring. Emiko was bringing dishes out from the kitchen to arrange on the table, and Tooru immediately went to help her.

Wakatoshi paused at the table. There were five chairs, enough for his family and Tooru with one left over. The chair at the head of the table had sat empty for as long as Wakatoshi could remember. His grandfather had probably sat there once, even though as far as he knew, it was his grandmother who had always been the undisputed head of the family.

He was not looking forward to her and Tooru meeting.

-

Something in the air shifted, and Tooru turned to find an old woman standing in the doorway with her hands in her kimono sleeves, the very picture of austerity. Wakatoshi’s grandmother, undoubtedly. Wakatoshi didn’t look at all like his mother, and Tooru couldn’t say if he resembled his father or not. But this woman reminded him of Wakatoshi. Not physically, of course, but in the way the air in the room gravitated towards her, and the way she treated this as a matter of course.

A cheesy, too-bright grin wouldn’t work on her. Instead, Tooru opted for a polite smile, coupled with a bow deeper than he would usually give. When he rose, he said, “Pleased to meet you. My name is Oikawa Tooru.”

“Ushijima Chiyo,” the old woman said. She crossed the room in a slow, stiff stride that somehow did not diminish her dignity and took a seat. Emiko filled her cup with steaming tea.

Bowls of soup were set on the table, ending the preparations. It looked like more than enough for four people, but Tooru still felt obligated to thank them.

He pinched grilled fish between his chopsticks and took a bite. "This is delicious. Thanks for cooking," he said to Emiko. Then, to reinforce the image of a grateful guest: "And thanks again for having me."

“Think nothing of it,” Emiko told him. “As you can see, we have plenty of room here.”

It was the exact thing Tooru had poked fun at earlier, but when she said it so guilelessly, he felt vaguely guilty.

There was a smattering of talk after that, mostly Emiko asking Tooru and Wakatoshi about how school was going. As the food disappeared, Tooru let himself imagine a sweet escape to his temporary room, but before his chance came, Chiyo decided to contribute to the conversation.

She was looking directly at Tooru. “You have unusually long hair for a man. Is that some sort of trend now?”

It would’ve been an innocuous, out-of-touch remark from an elderly person in any other situation. Something that would make Tooru laugh and run a hand through his hair, which in his opinion did not even qualify as long. But Wakatoshi’s grandmother looked all too serious, and Yuta’s accusation ran through his mind.

_You’re the girl in the relationship, right?_

He mustered up a smile and said, “Maybe it’s Tokyo’s influence,” as though he hadn’t had this exact hairstyle since he was a kid.

Chiyo pursed her lips. “This is the person you told us about, Wakatoshi?”

Wakatoshi nodded. “Yes. This is my boyfriend.”

Tooru wanted to cringe at the term. It was a lie, just as it had been since Wakatoshi first came up with it. But how could he protest? It was his own rule to continue the charade.

He tried to gauge the reactions of the others at the dinner table. Emiko seemed unruffled, but Chiyo was as unreadable as her grandson.

She cupped her hands around her tea and looked down as though contemplating it. She said, almost to herself, “Perhaps we should have cured your left-handedness, after all. It may have led to other unnatural inclinations.”

That statement was so absurd that Tooru forgot to be offended. To think that the old-fashioned nature of the Ushijima family was so severe that they felt left-handedness was a human defect. (Really, he wouldn’t have minded if they’d felt it a little harder and taken away a slight bit of the edge Wakatoshi had in volleyball.)

He couldn’t laugh, though. This family was letting him and Wakatoshi sit with them around the dinner table, “unnatural inclinations” and all. That was more than could be said about his family.

“Now, now,” Emiko interjected breezily. “We’ve been over this, Mother. We have to let Wakatoshi live his own life.”

“I worry about his future.”

“You do not need to,” Wakatoshi said with his unwavering confidence.

“Yes, I’m proud of you.” Emiko smiled at her son. “I can’t wait to watch you play in the Olympics one day.” She nodded at Tooru. “It’d be nice to see both of you there.”

It was Tooru’s turn to flaunt his confidence. “I’ll be the best setter who’s ever worn that red uniform.”

“Oh, and speaking of the Olympics…” Wakatoshi’s mother brought up the upcoming Tokyo games, and while it was an obvious attempt to change the topic, Tooru silently thanked her. He relaxed back in his seat, realizing he’d stiffened up under Chiyo’s scrutiny.

Dinner was then officially over, and Wakatoshi showed Tooru where the bath was. Tooru put his hand on the knob and pushed it open, but he could sense Wakatoshi still standing there, watching. Tooru turned to snap at him, but he spoke first.

“I like your hair,” he said, then left Tooru alone in the hallway.

-

There were at least five distinct compartments in Tooru’s heart. He knew they were there, because he kept them neatly organized, never letting one spill over into another.

The first compartment held all the feelings and expressions that could be safely shared with the world at large. A smile in front of a crowd, competitiveness during a game, teasing among friends. It didn’t matter if the feelings expressed during those times were real or fake, as long as they were acceptable.

The second compartment was for when he was with people who knew him a little better. Enemies like Satori he could sneer at, friends like Takahiro and Issei that wouldn't judge him if he wasn't perfect, because they already knew he wasn't.

Tooru only delved into the third compartment around special people. Hajime, mostly. Hajime was allowed to see him cry and shout and lose his cool. He was allowed to know Tooru could be weak.

The fourth was for him and him alone. When he really needed to cry, all by himself on a sleepless night, feeling the weight of a thousand failures and the fear of a future that might never exist if he didn’t win against people who had been better than him since birth.

But the fifth compartment went unacknowledged. There were some things Tooru would never let himself admit he felt, not even when he was all alone, with no one to see him falter or fall apart. Right then, though, the lid keeping those feelings in was rattling loose.

He was outside, even though it was two in the morning and freezing. He walked by the still koi, the moon spilling its light across the surface of the pond they slept in. He passed by the rock garden, not so callous that he scuffed the gravel or otherwise messed up its meticulous layout. There was a gazebo at the far end of the valley Wakatoshi’s house was nestled in. Tooru sat down on its wooden bench and willed himself not to cry.

He lasted five minutes, and then his head was buried in his knees, and his shoulders shook as his parents’ rejection hit him with its full force for the first time. He’d been avoiding thinking about it, and whenever the sadness that came with it threatened to bubble up, he would go lose himself in volleyball, getting his blood pumping and his heart racing so he was too full of adrenaline for anything else.

His future plans were still intact, of course. Play volleyball at the highest level possible, surrounded by teammates with the same passion and dedication to honing skill. His sports scholarship took care of school expenses. He’d be able to survive just fine until graduation, and then he’d go pro and never have to worry about being anything but successful and amazing.

Yet it stung to know his parents would never see him as anything but a fuck-up. And they hadn’t even told him that to his face. Hadn’t cared enough about him to say good riddance.

He was so lost in unwanted feelings that he didn’t notice his phone vibrating at first. It was in the pocket of the sweatpants he’d thrown on before hopping off the guest room veranda for a middle-of-the-night stroll. He pulled it out and didn’t feel any surprise when he saw who was calling.

Because when two people’s hearts beat in sync like his and Hajime’s did, things like a sixth sense were made real.

Tooru swallowed his tears and answered. “Don’t you need your beauty sleep, Iwa-chan? I don’t, obviously, but you have to have aspirations beyond looking like a gorilla the rest of your life.”

“Shut up,” Hajime said, without any of the rage that would’ve foretold a punch the next time they met. “Where are you? Still in Tokyo? Try answering your phone when I call at a normal hour next time, asshole.”

Tooru looked out at the Ushijima house. “I’m the last place I want to be.”

Hajime snorted. “Benched?”

“Okay, the second last place. I’m at Ushiwaka’s.”

“The hell are you with him for?”

Tooru smiled ruefully. “I don’t know, Iwa-chan. What am I doing with him instead of you?”

But even as he said it, he knew he couldn’t keep doing this. Not to Hajime, and not to himself.

“It’s just for the holidays,” he went on. “His mom’s not so bad.” The light glinting off the koi pond caught his eye. “Did you know koi hibernate?”

“What?” Hajime sounded a little exasperated at the random turn in conversation, but at least he wasn’t hung up on Tooru’s bitter little remark, which was the important thing. “Look, I’m going to be back in Miyagi tomorrow. We should hang out with Hanamaki and Matsukawa while we have the chance.”

Tooru found himself nodding. It'd be nice to be back on friendly territory soon. “We should pop in on Yahaba-chan and see how Seijou's doing, too.”

“You just want to show off to the new first-years.”

“They should know how unlucky they are to miss being on a team with me by one year!”

Hajime scoffed. “You’re terrible. Go to bed, Shittykawa.”

“You first. And stop furrowing your brow. You’re gonna have the worst wrinkles.”

They bantered another minute or two, and despite how late it was, it felt like an actual, normal conversation. Tooru was able to forget about how miserable he'd been before the call. It had taken months after his slip at the party for awkwardness not to be the dominant emotion between them. He’d thought their friendship would never recover, but it was a bond that had proven resilient. Sometimes that made Hajime's rejection all the more painful, but Tooru knew he wouldn't have been able to survive losing him altogether.

He hung up after one last taunt and scrolled through his notifications as he walked back to the house, frost-hard grass crunching under his feet. Besides the earlier missed calls from Hajime, there were some messages from his older sister as well. He hoped her phone was on silent or off so his quick message back that he'd make sure to answer his phone the next day didn't wake her up.

He slid the glass doors shut behind him and crawled into the futon. With the thick curtains loosened to fall over the glass, he was surrounded by the eerie dark of an unknown home. It didn't have time to get to him before he was falling asleep, though, and he might've slept on and on if his phone, still in his pocket, hadn't gone off again.

Tooru answered without opening his eyes, his “hello” coming out as more of a yawn than a word.

"I know you're not a morning person, but wow. Aren't you usually up by now, Tooru?" came a woman's voice.

He rolled onto his side and was assaulted by slanting rays of sun peeking in between the curtains. Judging by how bright the sliver of outside he could see looked, it was a miracle no one had woken him up. He didn't know if that meant it was still before breakfast or that they were letting him sleep in.

Groaning theatrically, he covered his eyelids with the back of his hand to bring back the dark. "It's break, Nee-chan. That means I can sleep whenever and however much I want."

The sound of pounding footsteps came from his sister's end of the call, and then the clattering of something like a hundred blocks gone flying. She sighed. "If only being a parent came with breaks."

"It can," Tooru said tonelessly. "Apparently."

Realizing what she'd said, his sister fell quiet for a moment. "That's what I'm calling about, actually. I talked to Mom and Dad and told them I wasn't spending the holidays with them and neither was Takeru until they got over their... whatever their issue is." She sounded unusually earnest. They'd always been the type of siblings to rib each other, not have heart-to-hearts. "You know I'm on your side."

He did know it, even though he'd turned down all her offers to come to Tokyo and cheer him up or to try to mediate a meeting with their parents. He doubted she had the time between her job and Takeru, and even if she did, it wouldn't help. It wouldn't change anything.

"But Takeru-chan probably wants to see his grandparents," Tooru said. "And I have somewhere to stay, anyway."

"With Hajime-kun?"

"Not exactly."

His sister was smart enough to figure it out. "That Ushiwaka guy?"

"Yeah."

She fell into an even more loaded silence, clearly trying to choose between curiosity and tact. Tooru made it easy for her by answering the unspoken question. "I'm still in love with Hajime, though." He laughed a bit. "Guess I never could take your advice about that."

"Please, Tooru, I was a dumb teenager when I said what I did." She sounded pained. "I don't think you should feel bad about whoever you like. I'm just sorry Hajime-kun didn't feel the same way."

Tooru didn't want to linger on that ever-burning regret, so he took a flippant tone and said, "I am such a catch, it really makes no sense."

"That's the spirit. A lot of people don't end up with their first love, you know. And from personal experience, it's harder to get over someone who never gave you a chance. You're going to end up with someone great anyway."

He didn’t really want relationship advice from his already married straight sister, even if she meant it as kindly as possible. “Whatever you say, Nee-chan. I’ve got to get up and…” He frowned as he stood and stretched. “Go stare at koi or rocks or something, I guess.”

There was another loud noise in the background, and his sister moved away from the phone’s speaker to call out, “Takeru, I told you to take the volleyball outside!”

“But it’s cold!” came Takeru’s distant reply.

Tooru covered his mouth, but his sister probably heard him laughing anyway. “Good luck with the holiday break,” he couldn’t help but say.

“Yeah, yeah. Take care, Tooru.”

Tooru tossed his phone aside and kicked the blanket back over the futon, not bothering to tuck it in or fold the mattress up properly. Since he still hadn't unpacked his bags, he pulled a change of clothes from one and swapped it for his pajamas. He could tell his hair was a wild mess from how he'd slept, so after spending another few minutes taming it, he left the sanctuary of the guest room.

His phone told him it was past ten, which had to be past breakfast, too. Fortunately, he ran into Emiko in the hallway, and she told him to help himself to the leftovers in the refrigerator. He went to the kitchen, switched the coffee maker on, and brewed some fresh coffee while his plate of food (with the natto left off) was in the microwave.

He ate his fill, drank coffee with a generous spoonful of sugar, and put his dirty dishes in the dishwasher, all without Wakatoshi appearing. It was hardly that Tooru was disappointed to be left alone, but more like he was wary, waiting for a predator to spring from the shadows and doom him to a day of infinite monotony.

It was past eleven when Tooru cautiously wandered down a hallway that hadn’t been part of his tour, probably because it was where the family bedrooms were. He looked around furtively, hoping he wouldn't run into Wakatoshi’s grandmother or accidentally end up in her room. But when he peeked inside the one room whose door was open, he knew it had to be Wakatoshi’s.

He stepped inside and, after a brief internal debate, closed the door. If Wakatoshi had been missing since Tooru got up, what were the chances he’d choose the next ten minutes to show up?

(Knowing his luck, pretty high, but Tooru took the risk nonetheless.)

He looked around the bedroom. It was decently-sized, a perfect rectangle with its own set of glass doors and a veranda beyond. There were some things lying around the room that Tooru'd expected: a multi-colored volleyball, a stack of sports magazines, a couple of dumbbells.

But on top of a dozen back issues of Volleyball Monthly was a bookmarked copy of Shounen Jump. The bookcase attached to the desk held collections of plays and poetry, some that looked like they were part of the same series as the book Tooru'd seen in Wakatoshi's car. On the wall was a world map, and different places were marked on it with thumbtacks. Tooru remembered what Wakatoshi had said about his father and wondered if they were places he’d lived.

Overall, it looked entirely like a normal bedroom, albeit neater than most guys would keep it. It even had a Western-style bed and wooden flooring, unlike the guest bedroom. It didn't look like it belonged to a single-minded, inflexible athletic monster.

Tooru sat down at the desk and tilted different books towards him to see their covers. They didn't have the old, musty smell of neglected books kept for decoration. He reached down for the copy of Shounen Jump and thumbed through it. He almost never read manga and only recognized a couple of the stories because characters from them had been emblazoned all over convenience store goods and fast food restaurants in past promotions. The bookmarked story showed a boy with a fishing rod who apparently got into fights a lot. Tooru pushed the uncomfortable wooden chair back and flopped across Wakatoshi's bed while he read.

He was only a few panels in when he noticed something. Or rather, he sensed there was something to notice, but he wasn’t sure what. The door remained securely shut, so no one had discovered his snooping. But still, something was tickling his mind…

It was the scent, he realized with a jolt. The scent of Wakatoshi’s recently slept-in bed, the same scent that used to linger on Tooru’s skin after they wrapped around each other in heat and lust.

He shot up from the bed and dropped the Jump magazine back on the pile, not quite at the same angle it was before. He hastily brushed the wrinkles from the blanket, not wanting Wakatoshi to get the wrong idea, and then he rushed out of the room like it was on fire.

Wakatoshi was coming down the hall, and Tooru knew he was caught. So he acted like he’d done nothing wrong and crossed his arms as Wakatoshi noticed him.

“Where were you, Ushiwaka-chan? Pretty rude to abandon your guest.”

Wakatoshi looked from Tooru to his half-open bedroom door, but all he said was, “It was your choice to sleep in. I was outside, waiting for you.”

“How was I supposed to know that?”

Tooru tried to slip past Wakatoshi so he wouldn't feel trapped between him and the hallway's dead end. But the hallway was narrow, forcing him close enough to catch Wakatoshi's scent, now that he was hyper-aware of it. Tooru turned away as his cheeks went red.

Wakatoshi followed after him. “Today, I thought we could-”

Still flustered, and irked at himself for being flustered, and irked at Wakatoshi for being the oblivious cause of his discomfort, Tooru interrupted him. “Let’s play volleyball.”

It was the one thing they could agree on, so he figured Wakatoshi would go along with it. Maybe it was the same thing he'd been about to suggest. “We can borrow one of Shiratorizawa's courts.”

Tooru wrinkled his nose. “No, thanks. I want to play with my old teammates from Seijou, and none of us want to go there.” Truth be told, if there was a way for Tooru to meet up with Hajime and the others on his own, he would. He couldn’t exactly walk however far it was to the closest bus stop, though.

Another idea came to mind, either a brilliant one or a horrible one, but at the rate things were going, probably an inevitable one. He turned on his heel and pointed a challenging finger at Wakatoshi.

“And if you’re coming anyway, tell your friends. We’ll crush all of you.”

Karasuno had taken away his final chance to beat Shiratorizawa in high school, and now he was going to make that right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How's that for a fast update? It was great to hear from some people who were following this fic before my unfortunate hiatus, as well as some new readers. Either way, your kudos and comments are greatly appreciated!
> 
> Next chapter: the Shiratorizawa versus Aoba Jousai match we deserved all along. I had to do some groundwork with Ushijima's family and bring in Oikawa's sister this chapter, which meant mostly scenes with pseudo-OCs, but expect a lot of familiar faces next time.


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